After Being Questioned on Diamond and Silk, Zuckerberg Promises to Overturn 'Unsafe' Label
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress on Wednesday that the supression of Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway and Rochelle “Silk” Richardson on his platform was an “enforcement error.”
GOP Congressman Joe Barton of Texas pressed Zuckerberg during the Facebook head’s appearance before the House Commerce Committee.
Zuckerberg promised the decision would be reversed.
Rep. Barton presses Zuckerberg on Diamond and Silk.
Zuck says his team made an "enforcement error" and that Facebook will reverse it.#ZuckHearing #Zuckerberg
— Allum Bokhari (@AllumBokhari) April 11, 2018
Hardaway and Richardson said they received an email from Facebook last week, which read in part, “The Policy team has came to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community,” adding, “This decision is final and it is not appeal-able in any way.”
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the decision to Fox News earlier this week, saying the content created by the pro-Donald Trump duo had been deemed “unsafe.”
Hardaway responded to Facebook’s decision Tuesday night on FNC’s “The Ingraham Angle,” stating, “When you say that you deem us ‘unsafe to the community,’ what you’re saying is that we are a danger to our community.”
She continued, “It’s offensive, it’s appalling, I look at this as discrimination. … This is censorship. You are censoring our voices.”
The Facebook spokesperson told Fox the company had decided to reverse its decision.
“We have communicated directly with Diamond and Silk about this issue,” a statement from Facebook read. “The message they received last week was inaccurate and not reflective of the way we communicate with our community and the people who run Pages on our platform.”
But Hardaway told Fox no one had reached out to them regarding Facebook’s reversal.
The conservative commentators further addressed the issue Wednesday on “Fox & Friends” with a clear message: “We are not unsafe!”
.@DiamondandSilk on @foxandfriends: “We are not unsafe. We are not animals…Why is [Mark Zuckerberg] trying to turn his platform into a political playground?” https://t.co/3uKqpwxFhM pic.twitter.com/FLKvJY5Xkh
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 11, 2018
“We are not unsafe. We are not animals. We are two black chicks that’s down with politics, that’s patriotic, that loves our country, that loves our president and that loves his agenda,” said Hardway.
“If (Zuckerberg) was concerned about his platform being a place for all ideas, then why would he put algorithms in place to censor some ideas?” she added. “And why is he turning Facebook into a political playground for Democrats?”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz questioned Zuckerberg on Tuesday about reports of his platform’s political bias against conservatives, citing the removal of Diamond and Silk among other examples.
“This is actually a concern that I have, and that I try to root out at the company — is making sure that we don’t have any bias in the work that we do,” Zuckerberg responded. “I think it is a fair concern that people would at least wonder about.”
As reported by The Western Journal, Facebook’s recent “trusted sources” algorithm change implemented in February resulted in conservative sites seeing double-digit decreases in traffic, while liberal sites (apparently judged trustworthy) have seen traffic stay the same or increase.
The original study by The Western Journal, reported on widely by other outlets, documented the change in reach to various news outlets based on their ideological bent, following Facebook’s February algorithm change.
The findings were unequivocal: Liberal publishers saw a 2 percent increase in traffic, while the most popular conservative sites averaged a 14 percent decrease.
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