WATCH Ted Cruz Humiliate Zuckerberg For Targeting Conservatives Diamond Silk And Chick-fil-A
SOURCE : https://goo.gl/2W2kD6
As usual Senator and 2016 Republican Presidential candidate, Ted Cruz has the back of the American people, and when it came to getting the bottom of Mark Zuckerberg’s and Facebook political biased he didn’t let us down.
On Tuesday the Republican Senator from Texas took Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to task on whether or not the social media monopoly was in the business of suppressing free speech from conservative sources such as the popular pro-Trump duo Diamond and Silk and the fast-food chain Chick-fil-A.
Here is more on the grilling via Talking Points Memo:
“There are a great many Americans who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship,” Cruz told Zuckerberg during a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees.
“There have been numerous instances with Facebook,” he continued, before listing a few, starting with a 2016 Gizmodo report that former Facebook employees claimed the website’s “trending” sidebar had suppressed conservative-leaning stories.
“In addition to that,” Cruz continued, “Facebook has initially shut down the Chick-fil-A appreciation day page, has blocked a post of a Fox News reporter, has blocked over two dozen Catholic pages and most recently blocked Trump supporters Diamond and Silk’s page, with 1.2 million Facebook followers, after determining their content and brand were, quote, ‘unsafe to the community.’ To a great many Americans that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias.”
Zuckerberg didn’t answer the individual examples the senator asked him. He just sidestepped them like he sidestepped most questions which were asked during the first day of testimony on capitol hill.
But one part of the questioning was particularly interesting and stood out. Zuckerberg claimed that the goal of Facebook is to keep people safe and that they need to help stop terrorists and terrorist organizations. But as most of us who are on Facebook on a daily basis know it took months to get the social media giant to remove the group “Death to Israel.” Even though most of us on the right know many groups who have been removed for no reason at all and without any warning whatsoever.
As an avid Facebook user myself I struggle to find any fellow conservative, or even moderate, who hasn’t spent at least one day in what we all affectionately call “Facebook Jail.” Which is odd because none of the far left people I know are even aware you can get suspended from Facebook.
Although Cruz did a phenomenal job he did forget to ask Zuckerberg one question I would like to know. Does he believe two African American women such as Diamond and Silk are terrorists or are a danger to our society?
More on Diamond and Silk via Fox News:
“Diamond and Silk, two fervent conservative supporters of President Trump, accused Facebook Monday night of discrimination and censorship after they said the social media giant branded them as “unsafe to the community.”
Speaking with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on “The Ingraham Angle,” the duo recalled what they called a months-long battle with the company after noticing a drop in engagement in September 2017.
“They kept giving us the run around, ‘nothing is wrong with your page,’ ‘there’s nothing wrong with it,’ ‘we don’t know’ … It was just back and forth, back and forth,” Diamond said.
“The straw was the other day when they wrote and said that they deem our content and our brand ‘unsafe to the community,’” she added.
A Facebook spokesperson initially told Fox News that the content created by Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway and Rochelle “Silk” Richardson was branded as “unsafe” over concerns about their online rhetoric.
Women say they have been corresponding with Facebook about their page since September 7, 2017.
Diamond and Silk went on to accuse Facebook of discrimination and censorship based on their political views.
“When you say that you deem us ‘unsafe to the community’, what you’re saying is that we are a danger to our community,” Diamond said. “It’s offensive, it’s appalling, I look at this as discrimination … This is censorship. You are censoring our voices.”
Facebook has since backtracked over classifying the conservative firebrands as “unsafe,” admitting error in how the situation was handled.
“We have communicated directly with Diamond and Silk about this issue. 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,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News.