New Mexico attorney general sues Snap Inc

According to news on September 6, 2024, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres has filed a lawsuit against Snap Inc., the company behind Snapchat. Torres accused the website in Santa Fe state court on Thursday of facilitating the sharing of child sexual abuse materials and facilitating child sexual exploitation through its design and policies. He also claimed that the company blatantly promotes child trafficking, drug and gun trading.

In December last year, Torres filed a similar lawsuit against Meta (the parent company of Instagram and Facebook), alleging that it allowed predators to trade child sexual abuse materials on the platform and solicit minors for sex trafficking. The lawsuit is ongoing. Torres said Snap's harmful design features provide an environment for predators and easily target children through sexual blackmail schemes. Sexual blackmail is convincing others to send explicit photos and then threatening to make them public unless the victim pays money or engages in sexual transactions. He also said Snap misleads users that photos and videos will disappear, but predators can capture them permanently, creating a virtual yearbook of child sexual images that are traded, sold and stored.

Snap said in a statement that it is concerned about the online safety of young people, understands that online threats are evolving, and will continue to work hard to address key issues. In the past few years, it has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in trust and safety teams and promoted online safety by reviewing content and designing services.

According to complaints, there are more online sexual interactions among minors on Snapchat and more minors are recruited as victims of sex trafficking than on other platforms. New Mexico has conducted a months-long secret investigation into child sexual abuse images on Snapchat and found a large network of dark web sites dedicated to sharing involuntary images stolen from Snap. Last year, more than 10,000 records related to Snap and child sexual abuse materials were found, including information about minors under 13 being sexually assaulted. As part of the investigation, the New Mexico Department of Justice set up a Snapchat decoy account for a 14-year-old boy to find bad accounts and exchange information. The lawsuit alleges that Snapchat is the largest source of images and videos on dark web sites. Investigators also found that Snapchat accounts directly publicly distribute and sell child abuse images on the platform.