NOT SO SMOOTH
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Pro-Trump YouTube duo Diamond and Silk (Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson) are testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee today as a result of their claims that they were censored by Facebook, but what was supposed to be a PR slam dunk for the pair may turn out to be a nightmare after they blatantly lied under oath.

During the hearing, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) asked whether or not Diamond And Silk had been paid by the Trump campaign. Hardaway enthusiastically stated that they had "never been paid by the Trump campaign."

The problem is, public records show that they have. A Federal Election Commission filing from the Trump campaign clearly shows that "DIAMOND AND SILK" were paid $1,274.94 by the Trump campaign for "FIELD CONSULTING" on November 22nd, 2016.

 An FEC filing shows that Diamond And Silk were paid by the Trump campaign. FEC

Later, they claimed that the payment shown in the FEC filing was an error.

The snafu wasn't the pair's only misstep during the hearing, which was originally over claims that Facebook was politically censoring them through their filtering process. Diamond and Silk claimed that on April 5th, Facebook restricted their account because their content was "determined unsafe to the community." On the 11th, the pair claimed that no one had reached out to them after the original communication despite Mark Zuckerberg testifying on the 10th and 11th that the company had been in contact to correct what he called an "enforcement error." Despite emails showing that they were contacted as early as the 9th, the pair maintained their claim that they weren't contacted until the 12th. 

 

In the hearing, Diamond and Silk argued that Facebook used other methods to suppress their content, saying, "Subtly and slowly Facebook used one mechanism at a time to diminish reach by restricting our page so that our 1.2 million followers would not see our content, thus silencing our conservative voices." They also asked everyone watching to "follow and like" their pages.

Ari Waldman, director of New York University's Innovation Center for Law and Technology told Congress that what Diamond and Silk experienced was what many content creators have experienced as Facebook has changed their algorithm, and suggested that it may not be targeted: "The result is that a lot of content gets filtered out, but no more so from the right than from the left."

 

<p>Benjamin Goggin is the News Editor at Digg.&nbsp;</p>

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