OPINION:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is headed to Capitol Hill to testify about some social media matters, and answer questions from Congress about privacy and election interference and such.
Good. Maybe at the same time he can explain why his site’s censor gods think the black pro-President Donald Trump duo Diamond And Silk are considered a danger to society.
Seems an opportune time, anyway. Kill two birds and so forth, as they saying goes.
Here’s what’s happened: Diamond And Silk, known at birth as Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, are two outspoken and politically active women — pro-Trump women — who cut and post frequent videos about the goings-on of modern-day politics. They have tons of followers, but apparently, these followers haven’t been receiving notifications of new video posts for some time — a situation Diamond And Silk liken to “censorship and discrimination.”
Since Sept. 7, 2017, the pair said, they’ve been trying to find out what’s the deal at Facebook — why the notifications of their new posts haven’t been sent to site followers.
Well, they finally got their answer from Facebook. But it’s hardly satisfactory.
From Diamond And Silk’s Facebook page: “[We] have been corresponding since September 7, 2017, with Facebook (owned by Mark Zuckerberg) about their bias censorship and discrimination against D&S brand page. Finally after several emails, chats, phone calls, appeals, beating around the bush, lies, and giving us the run around, Facebook gave us another bogus reason why Millions of people who have liked and/or followed our page no longer receives notification and why our page, post and video reach was reduced by a very large percentage.”
The response? The reason?
“Here,” they wrote, “is the reply from Facebook. ’The Policy team has came to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community.’ Yep, this was FB conclusion after 6 Months, 29 days, 5 hrs, 40 minutes and 43 seconds.”
In other words: Facebook’s faceless censors couldn’t come up with a valid reason to censor the pro-Trump voices, so they simply filed it under “danger to the community at-large.”
And then, as an ultimate shut door, the censors added: “This decision is final and it is not appeal-able in any way,” Diamond And Silk wrote.
Well, well, seems there is some ’splainin’ that could be called for, yes?
For instance: If Diamond And Silk were so dang “unsafe to the community,” why were they allowed to keep on keeping on Facebook all the time censors regarded them as “unsafe?” Moreover, why are they still on Facebook, “unsafe” as they’ve been deemed to be?
Diamond And Silk, meanwhile, are still trying to get specifics from the censors about which content has been regarded “unsafe,” versus which is acceptable and safe.
But really, we all know the answer to that, don’t we?
If it’s in favor of Trump, it’s “unsafe.” If it’s critical of Democrats, it’s “unsafe.” If it walks the leftist walk, toes the progressive line, it’s safe and acceptable.
Of course, maybe Zuckerberg can explain it better. He will be in the congressional hot seat, after all. There’s really no better time to ask.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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