• A representative of Facebook apologized to pro-Trump online personalities Diamond & Silk during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.
  • Facebook’s apology and confession comes after Diamond & Silk repeatedly misrepresented the facts and circumstances of their dispute with the company.

WASHINGTON – A Facebook official publicly apologized to the right-wing, Donald Trump supporting online personalities Diamond & Silk during a congressional hearing on Tuesday, despite the duo repeatedly misrepresenting the facts of their dispute earlier this year.

During a hearing with the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Facebook Vice President for Global Policy Management Monika Bickert mentioned the April hearing in which Diamond & Silk, whose real names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, testified in front of the same committee.

“We understand their frustrations over some past communications with our team, and we recognize that we badly mishandled their concerns,” Bickert said. “We apologized to them at the time, and I’d like to extend my own personal apology to them again today.”

The apology was part of Bickert’s prepared opening remarks, which she altered to add “badly” before saying they “mishandled” Diamond & Silk’s concerns.

"While they were never banned from the platform, the message they received on April 5, 2018 that characterized their Page as 'dangerous' was incorrect and is not reflective of the way we seek to communicate with our community and the people who run Pages on our platform," Bickert said.

She added: "We recognize that we've incorrectly removed content on the other end of the political spectrum as well, and we know these incidents often garner significant public attention. We have learned from these experiences, and although we will never reduce the number of errors to zero, we are committed to improving further in this area."

Bickert's apology to Diamond & Silk on behalf of Facebook is at odds with what happened regarding the duo's dispute with the social media giant.

During appearances on Fox News and in other conservative media outlets, Hardaway and Richardson repeatedly claimed that Facebook never contacted them, which was not true. In an interview with Business Insider on the eve of their congressional testimony, they repeated the claims.

The Tuesday hearing, which featured representatives from Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, was aimed at examining content filtration and "censorship" of conservative voices on various social media platforms. The allegations of conservative speech suppression has been a major focus of conservative lawmakers and groups in recent months.

A spokesperson for Diamond & Silk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.