Christian satire site The Babylon Bee received a terse warning from Facebook this week after the "independent fact-checkers" at Snopes reported that one of the site's humor articles was "false."

Adam Ford, who runs The Babylon Bee, was warned by Facebook that a recent satire article about CNN "contains information disputed by (Snopes.com) an independent fact checker." Repeat offenders, Ford was told, "will see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertized [sic] removed."

The story in question pokes fun at CNN with the headline: "CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication." Anyone with even a sliver of a funny bone tucked away behind their appendix would know that it wasn't a serious news piece, but, alas, the humorless dolts at Snopes had to take spell out the obvious.

Claim: CNN invested in an industrial-sized washing machine to help their journalists and news anchors spin the news before publication. Rating: False

"Although it should have been obvious that the Babylon Bee piece was just a spoof of the ongoing political brouhaha over alleged news media 'bias' and 'fake news,'" Snopes explained, "some readers missed that aspect of the article and interpreted it literally."

Is that so? Are we to believe there are people who really accepted at face value the claim that CNN bought a literal washing machine to literally "spin" their news? Highly doubtful. What more likely happened is that some trigger-happy activists who don't appreciate Christian and conservative satire reported The Babylon Bee to Facebook, setting off an investigation by Snopes.

Snopes conceded that "the site’s footer gives away the Babylon Bee’s nature by describing it as 'Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire,'" and explained that the site "has been responsible for a number of other (usually religious-themed) spoofs that have been mistaken for real news articles."

Babylon Bee's Adam Ford told PJM that this isn't the first time Snopes has been "fact-checked" by Snopes. (You can read the other instances here.) "But this is the first time Facebook has used that to threaten us with reduced reach and demonetization," Ford said. "Also it seems that anyone who clicked on the article got a notice that it was 'disputed.'"

I find this so funny. pic.twitter.com/lfDBj4OVW7 — Nathan Hall (@Nate0fAmericans) March 2, 2018

So I clicked on the headline and Facebook gave me this. ???????? pic.twitter.com/793CqTRwdB — Roger for Christ (@MrB_Loves_Jesus) March 2, 2018

He said they also reduced the image size on the Facebook card after it was flagged, which "probably stamped out the reach" of the article.

While on the surface this may seem like nothing more than a silly misunderstanding or overreaction on the part of Snopes and Facebook, it's important to view the warning in the context of conservative groups and individuals being removed from Facebook and other social media outlets at an alarming rate. Facebook claims that they're in the process of hiring thousands of fact-checkers along with "professional" fact-checking organizations that oh, by the way, happen to lean left.