GOP Lawmakers Continue Grilling Zuckerberg About Diamond & Silk: They’re ‘Not Terrorism’
Rep. Blackburn: "Do you subjectively manipulate your algorithms to prioritize or censor speech?"
Zuckerberg: "There are types of content like terrorism that I think we all agree we don't want to have on our service."
Rep. Blackburn: "Diamond and Silk is not terrorism." pic.twitter.com/e3Hxrue2cZ
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) April 11, 2018
After an outraged Ted Cruz grilled Mark Zuckerberg yesterday for supposedly blocking pro-Trump vloggers Diamond & Silk from his platform, Republican lawmakers continued the onslaught against the Facebook founder and dramatically declared the duo “is not terrorism.”
Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who was particularly angered by the alleged censorship of Diamond & Silk, used her best can-I-speak-to-the-manager voice to ask Zuckerberg if he subjectively manipulates Facebook “algorithms to prioritize or censor speech.”
“Congresswoman,” began Zuckerberg — in a tone similar to that of a Best Buy employee explaining to an elderly customer how to restart a computer. “We don’t think about what we’re doing as censoring speech, There are types of content like terrorism that I think we all agree we don’t want to have on our service, so we built systems that can identify those and can remove that content and we’re very proud of that work.”
Blackburn was not sastified with the answer, firing back, “Let me tell ya’ something right now, Diamond and Silk is not terrorism.”
The Tennessee lawmaker and Cruz were not the only conservatives to interrogate Zuckerberg about the Trump supporting duo. Congressman Joe Barton of Texas relayed a question from one of his Facebook followers in which they asked why Facebook is “censoring conservative vloggers Diamond & Silk.”
Mark Zuckerberg addresses the censorship of Facebook duo Diamond and Silk that has conservatives up in arms. pic.twitter.com/Lan9wqQCxv
— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) April 11, 2018
As can be seen above, Zuckerberg responded with basically the same answer he gave to Cruz and Blackburn — citing Facebook’s automatic safety features for accidentally flagging their content in an issue that they have since tried to “reverse.”
Watch the Blackburn exchange at the top of page, via BuzzFeed News.
[images via screengrab]
