Facebook has started soft-censoring some posts linking to satirical news site The Babylon Bee by asking users to confirm whether they want to share posts after clicking the share button.
This “Do you want to share?” confirmation screen appears after users attempt to share some of The Babylon Bee’s posts including this satirical Bernie Sanders post.
On most Facebook posts, clicking or tapping the share button brings up the share menu straight away but this additional dialogue box is forcing users to take another action and confirm that they want to share before they can actually get to this menu.
This “Do you want to share?” confirmation screen is likely to cause a notable reduction in the total Facebook shares for The Babylon Bee’s website.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed that adding fact-check warnings to content that is deemed to be “misinformation” reduces clicks through to the content by 95%.
When Facebook users attempt to share posts that have been labeled “False” by its fact-checkers, they are also presented with a similar screen which requires them to confirm that they want to share the post.
This isn’t the first time The Babylon Bee has had to deal with its content being censored on Facebook.
In 2018, its Facebook page was threatened with suppression and demonetization after one of its satirical articles titled “CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication” was fact-checked.
Several of The Babylon Bee’s other Facebook posts have also been suppressed over the last few years after Snopes fact-checked them.
The pushback against Snopes’ consistent fact-checks of The Babylon Bee’s satirical content resulted in it introducing a controversial “Labeled Satire” rating.
The Babylon Bee’s Editor-In-Chief Kyle Mann criticized this rating and said it insinuates that the content “may still fall under some kind of nebulous ‘satire but not really’ category.
