Diamond and Silk say Facebook silencing conservatives, in Capitol Hill testimony

close

Video

Diamond and Silk to make their case on Capitol Hill

Social media stars and Trump voters fire back at Facebook over censorship.

Pro-Trump social media stars Diamond and Silk, testifying Thursday before a House committee on Capitol Hill, decried Facebook and other tech giants for what they described as their "aggressive" efforts to "silence" conservatives.

The women, who have gained a conservative following and sparred frequently with Facebook over its policies, spoke as part of a hearing on social media "filtering."

“Facebook along with other social media sites have taken aggressive actions to silence conservative voices such as ourselves by deliberately restricting and weaponizing our page with algorithms that censor and suppress out free speech,” Diamond, whose real name is Lynette Hardaway, testified to the House Judiciary Committee.

The online sensations specifically claimed that Facebook's new algorithms were wrongly categorizing their account as "liberal," in turn causing it not to appear for conservative viewers.

“Followers stopped receiving notifications when we posted videos and content, followers was also mysteriously unliked from our page,” Diamond said.

The pair’s frustration stems from claims that their brand was being hurt and their videos were losing money -- due to policies they say are keeping followers from their content.

Facebook was one of three social media giants invited to testify Thursday, along with Twitter and Google, but none of the companies sent a representative to the hearing.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified on Capitol Hill earlier this month, and said his company is just trying to prevent interference in the 2018 elections. When asked specifically about Diamond and Silk's claims, he said that they had mistakenly received a message calling their content unsafe and the error was being resolved.

But Diamond and Silk on Thursday questioned his statements and said their page is still losing traction because of the "liberal" label. They said the platform does not give the option to change the label.

“We were being censored,” Diamond said in a separate interview on "Fox & Friends" Thursday morning. “Why did they target us maliciously and deliberately do this to us because of what? Because we support the president? Because we’re patriotic? Because we’re black women? What was it? What was the reason? Cause we want to know.”

Diamond and Silk are the hosts of D&S Chit Chat Live, as well as radio and TV personalities.