New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed a lawsuit against Snap Inc., the parent company of social media platform Snapchat, on Sept. 5, accusing the site of fostering and promoting the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and facilitating child sexual exploitation.
In a statement to multiple media, Snap said it shares Torrez’s and the public’s concerns about child safety online.
“We understand that online threats continue to evolve and we will continue to work diligently to address these critical issues,” a spokesperson said. “We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our trust and safety teams over the past several years, and designed our service to promote online safety by moderating content and enabling direct messaging with close friends and family.”
According to the lawsuit, the New Mexico Department of Justice (DOJ) has been investigating Santa Monica, California-based Snap’s platforms for several months.
Through that probe, officials found that Snapchat serves as a “primary platform” for criminals to carry out sextortion, in which individuals are coerced into sending explicit images or videos of themselves which are then used to blackmail them into sending money.
Torrez’s office said sextortion is so common and simple for predators to carry out on Snapchat that criminals even “circulate sextortion scripts that provide playbooks for victimizing minors.”
Despite the scripts being widely available on the platform, they have not been blacklisted by Snapchat, his office said.
Elsewhere, the probe found Snapchat is a primary social media platform for sharing CSAM, with parents reporting their children share more CSAM on Snapchat than on any other platform, and minors reporting having more online sexual interaction on Snapchat than any other platform.
More sex trafficking victims are also recruited on Snapchat than on any other platform while sexually explicit materials and predators are frequently recommended to minors, according to the lawsuit.
Snapchat ‘Misled’ Public About Safety
That undercover probe found more than 10,000 records related to Snap and CSAM in the last year alone, including information related to minors younger than 13 being sexually assaulted.“Undercover New Mexico DOJ investigators found many Snapchat accounts that openly captured, circulated, and sold CSAM directly on Snapchat’s platform are connected to each other through Snapchat’s recommendation algorithm,” the attorney general’s office said.
In addition to sexual abuse, the lawsuit claims the company also openly promotes child trafficking, drugs, and guns.
The New Mexico DOJ also alleged Snap and its executives have misled the public about the platform’s safety, and accused the platform of endangering the health and safety of New Mexico’s youth.
“Our undercover investigation revealed that Snapchat’s harmful design features create an environment where predators can easily target children through sextortion schemes and other forms of sexual abuse,” said Attorney General Torrez in a statement.
Torrez accused the platform of misleading users into believing photos and videos sent on their platform will disappear when, in fact, predators can permanently capture such content and have created a “virtual yearbook of child sexual images that are traded, sold, and stored indefinitely.”
“Through our litigation against Meta and Snap, the New Mexico Department of Justice will continue to hold these platforms accountable for prioritizing profits over children’s safety,” Torrez said.
That lawsuit, which is still pending, accused the social media giant of allowing predators to trade child sexual abuse material and solicit minors for sex on its platforms.
At the time, Meta said it prioritizes teen safety and age-appropriate experiences online and that the complaint “mischaracterizes our work using selective quotes and cherry-picked documents.”
The Epoch Times has contacted a spokesperson for Snap Inc. for further comment.
