YouTube stars and Trump supporters Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, best known as Diamond and Silk, accused Facebook of censorship and discrimination against conservatives during a Thursday hearing in Congress.
The social media personalities testified before the House Judiciary Committee on "Filtering Practices of Social Media" during which they spoke about what they see as bias on Facebook and other platforms.
As an example, Diamond and Silk said that their posts on Facebook, where they have over a million followers, have received less viewership since September. They allege that the social media platform has been censoring their page and as a result, their followers are not being notified of their new posts.
"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 censored and suppress our free speech," Diamond and Silk said before the congressmen. "Someone with a liberal point of view that spewed hate against the President can garner up to 19 million views with only 539,000 followers," they added. "Yet we have 1.2 million followers and only received 13,000 views on our video."
Democrats, however, grilled the pair for allegedly receiving payment from Trump's camp during the election campaign. Diamond and Silk denied the allegations and said that $1,274.94 paid to them was travel reimbursements.
Aside from Diamond and Silk, the committee also heard the testimonies of Corynne McSherry of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, David Chavern of the News Media Alliance, and Ari Waldman of the New York Law School Innovation Center for Law and Technology.
Diamond and Silk started posting their opinions about Trump's campaign on Facebook after attending a rally in December 2015. Followers found their diatribes entertaining and their videos soon went viral. They also built a website where they sold merchandise in support of Trump.
They also have over 150,000 followers on YouTube and 684,000 followers on Twitter.
