Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) told Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday that popular pro-Trump vloggers Diamond and Silk are not terrorists after their “content and brand” were deemed to be “unsafe” to the social media giant’s community.
“Let me tell you something right now,” Blackburn said to the 33-year-old Facebook founder as her time expired at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. “Diamond and Silk is not terrorism.”
The conservative duo, whose real names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, respectively, often appear on Fox News and created their own Facebook page in 2014.
{mosads}“When you say that you deem us ‘unsafe to the community,’ what you’re saying is that we are a danger to our community,” Hardaway told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday night. “It’s offensive, it’s appalling, I look at this as discrimination … This is censorship. You are censoring our voices,” she added.
Facebook said company officials have been in contact with the pair.
“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,” said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement to Fox News.
Zuckerberg is scheduled to complete his second and final day of testimony on Wednesday.
He has been under fire from the public and lawmakers regarding Facebook’s privacy practices amid a scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for the Trump campaign.
Cambridge Analytica obtained data on upwards of 87 million Facebook users in the United States without their consent starting in 2014.
Zuckerberg was criticized for remaining silent for several days after the controversy broke last month.