Selena Gomez emailed Sheryl Sandberg about militias on Facebook

• Selena Gomez spoke to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg in September about the militia groups on the site.
• The star told AP this week that in the wake of the Capitol Riots she was frustrated that tech platforms had ignored the warnings.
• “Facebook continues to allow dangerous lies about vaccines and COVID and the US election…” she said.
• Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

Selena Gomez emailed Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in September 2020 to warn against U.S. militias operating on the social network despite a ban.

The actress and singer shared those emails with the AP this week, expressing frustration in an interview that tech platforms had not done enough to quell extremist rhetoric 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 versus lies and Facebook, Instagram and big tech companies need to stop letting go. sink the lies and pretend to be the truth.

“Facebook continues to allow dangerous lies about vaccines, COVID and the US election, and neo-Nazi groups sell racist products through Instagram.”

According to the AP, Gomez wrote in his September email to Sandberg: “[A] Searching for a militia group “ Three Percent ” translates to dozens of pages, groups, and videos focused on people hoping and preparing for civil war, and there are dozens of groups titled “ “ white life matters ” which are full of hate and lies that could lead to people injured or, worse yet, killed. “

Photo by Jeremy Hogan / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Insider previously reported that the Three Percenters formed in 2008, per the Anti-Defamation League. Its name derives from the myth that only 3% of settlers fought in the War of Independence. The members of the group see themselves as modern incarnations of these revolutionaries.

Gomez’s email arrived despite Facebook’s ban or restriction on militia groups in August.

The actress also told Sandberg, who oversees Facebook’s advertising activity, about the lies in the ads. The company does not check for lies in political advertisements.

“I can’t believe you can’t check the ads before you take the money, and if you can’t, you shouldn’t be enjoying it,” she wrote. “You are not just doing nothing. You are profiting from the evil.”

AP said Sandberg responded by pointing out that Facebook removed millions of hate speech posts and removed divisive ads.

Facebook was on the defensive after the riots on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, which saw pro-Trump rioters storm the building and left five people dead. The rioters had been planning their activities openly on social media for weeks, on Facebook and other platforms.

Sandberg said publicly this week that the riots were largely planned on Facebook, saying: “These events have been largely organized on platforms that don’t have our capabilities to stop hate, that don’t have our standards and which do not have our transparency. ”