RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the age before cable, there was an iconic sci-fi program called The Outer Limits whose opening featured a series of test patterns; flickering screens; and a narrator who solemnly intoned, “Do not attempt to adjust your television set.  We will control all that you see and hear.”  Today, that is a chilling reality as social media giant Facebook censors what fans of social media icons Diamond and Silk, aka Lynette Hardaway and her sister Rochelle Richardson, see and hear from this dynamic pair of black conservative women on Facebook.

Racism is a term too easily bandied about these days, particularly by social progressives seeking to silence conservative thought and opinion which they deemed inherently racist in their chants of “white privilege.”  Yet it is precisely the term liberals would use if, say, Michelle Obama or the likes of Maxine Waters were treated this way, their words censored because they were deemed “unsafe” to the community.”  Indeed, Diamond and Silk themselves haVE raised the possibility that racism might be afoot here:

You are talking about two people here when you say Diamond and Silk.  We are the brand.  So, when you say things like we are ‘not safe’ for the community what are you trying to say?  What are you trying to do?  Are you trying to demonize us into something?  Are you stereotyping us?  What are you trying to do here?  Because this doesn’t feel right.  This here feels like racism.  The left always cries racism.  I see racism right here.

The lamestream media, which now can be said to include Facebook and Twitter, which routinely “shadowbans” conservatives, restricting what they can say and who gets to hear it, treat black conservatives like unicorns, mythical creatures that can’t possibly exist.  Black conservative women are invisible to those who constantly claim that Republicans are racist and sexist.

The reason for censorship of these two black conservative Trump-supporting women should be the first question Mark Zuckerberg gets asked when he testifies before Congress.  As bad as the selling of our personal data is, Zuckerberg’s selling out of the First Amendment is more of a threat to our democracy than any amount of ads he sold to Russians during the 2016 election cycle.

Diamond and Silk have their own list of questions for Zuckerberg, which they included in a post asking for some explanation for their being censored and their posts being restricted:

On Friday, Diamond and Silk posted on their Facebook page that the social media platform labeled their content “unsafe to the community.”

“Diamond And Silk have been corresponding since September 7, 2017, with Facebook (owned by Mark Zuckerberg), about their bias censorship and discrimination against D&S brand page,” they wrote.

“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.”  “Here is the reply from Facebook. Thu, Apr 5, 2018 at 3:40 PM: ‘The Policy team has came to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community.'” …

1. What is unsafe about two Blk-women supporting the President Donald J. Trump?

2. Our FB page has been created since December 2014, when exactly did the content and the brand become unsafe to the community?

3. When you say “community” are you referring to the Millions who liked and followed our page?

4. What content on our page was in violation?

5. If our content and brand was so unsafe to the community, why is the option for us to boost our content and spend money with FB to enhance our brand page still available? Maybe FB should give us a refund since FB censored our reach.

6. Lastly, didn’t FB violate their own policy when FB stopped sending notifications to the Millions of people who liked and followed our brand page?

Okay, Kamala Harris and Maxine Waters, let’s see you rise to the defense of these two black women.  Oh, but wait…they’re not supporters of Hillary Clinton.  They want to re-elect and not impeach 45.  They are not yelling “fire” in the crowded theater.  Rather, they are shouting truth in a world of deception; lies; and, yes, fake news.  They are exploding the stereotypes imposed on black conservatives and black conservative women by those who say they compose stereotypes.

What exactly does being “unsafe to the community” mean?  Have Diamond and Silk jeopardized the safe spaces liberal like to hide in when confronted with ideas that threaten their groupthink?  Is Zuckerberg trying to transform Facebook into one big safe space for liberals?  If so, he should say so, not pass of Facebook as a forum for the free exchange of ideas.

Yes, it is his sandbox we play in, but it is our sandbox, too.  Time was when the gatekeepers of three major TV networks and two major national newspapers sought to control what we see and hear.  Then cable news and social media showed us the men behind the curtain and shattered their monopoly on news and information.  But then, as people became more reliant on social media for news and information, liberals like Zuckerberg saw an opening, a means to re-impose their control of what many see and hear.

Zuckerberg needs to answer their questions:

They posed several questions to Facebook management, including, “What is unsafe about two Blk-women supporting the President Donald J. Trump?” …

What is the objection?  What is it about them exactly that makes them “unsafe” to the “community”?

“They gave us no rationale,” said Richardson on Fox and Friends Sunday morning.  “The only thing they told us was that it was unsafe for the community,” she said.  “We are two women of color,” she added, pointing out that she and her sister “don’t sell drugs” or belong to a gang.

“It’s offensive, it’s appalling!” Richardson exclaimed.  She posed a question for Facebook.  “Why are you censoring two women of color – two black women?” she asked.  “Why are you not allowing our … followers and likes to view our content because YOU deem it unsafe and you can’t even give us an explanation as to why?”

Selling our private information is a threat to our privacy.  Censoring the free flow of information is a threat to our democracy.  The Russians aren’t interfering in our democracy.  Mark Zuckerberg is.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.