Selena Gomez emailed Sheryl Sandberg about militia groups on Facebook

• Selena Gomez told Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook in September about militia groups on the site.
• The star told the AP this week that after the Capitol riots, she was frustrated with technology platforms that did not heed the warnings.
• “Facebook continues to allow dangerous lies about vaccines and COVID and the US elections …”, she said.
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

Selena Gomez sent an email to Facebook chief of operations Sheryl Sandberg in September 2020 to warn of U.S. militia groups operating on the social network despite the ban.

The actress and singer this week shared those emails with the AP, expressing frustration in an interview that tech platforms did not do enough to crack down on extremist speech before the U.S. Capitol riots.

She told the AP: “It’s not about me against you, one political party against another. It’s about truth against lies and Facebook, Instagram and big tech companies have to stop allowing the lies to flow and pretend to be the truth. .

“Facebook continues to allow dangerous lies about vaccines and COVID and the elections in the United States, and neo-Nazi groups are selling racist products via Instagram.”

According to the AP, Gomez wrote in his September email to Sandberg: “[A] searching for a ‘Three percent’ militia group results in dozens of pages, groups and videos focused on people waiting and preparing for civil war, and there are dozens of groups entitled ‘white lives are important’ that are filled with hate and lies that can lead to people being hurt or, worse, killed. “

Insider previously reported that the three percent were formed in 2008 by the Anti-Defamation League. Its name comes from the myth that only 3% of the colonists fought during the Revolutionary War. The group members see themselves as modern incarnations of these revolutionaries.

Gomez’s email came despite Facebook banning or restricting militia groups in August.

The actress also accused Sandberg, who oversees Facebook’s ad business, of lying in ads. The company does not check lies in political ads.

“I don’t believe that you can’t check the ads before accepting money, and if you can’t, you shouldn’t profit from it,” she wrote. “You are not just doing anything. You are profiting from evil.”

The AP said Sandberg responded by pointing to the fact that Facebook removed millions of hate speech posts and removed divisive ads.

Facebook is on the defensive after the United States Capitol riots on January 6, which saw pro-Trump protesters storm the building and left five dead. Protesters openly planned their activities on social media for weeks, on Facebook and other platforms.

Sandberg publicly stated this week that the riots were largely planned outside of Facebook, saying, “These events were largely organized on platforms that don’t have our ability to prevent hate, don’t have our standards and don’t have our transparency.”