The New Mexico attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Snapchat, alleging that the site’s design and policies encourage the sharing of child pornography and facilitate the sexual exploitation of children.
Attorney General Raul Torrez filed the lawsuit against Snap Inc. Thursday in state court in Santa Fe. In addition to sexual abuse, the complaint claims the company also openly promotes child trafficking, drugs and guns.
Last December, Mr. Torrez filed a similar lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, claiming that it allows predators to trade child sexual abuse material and solicit minors for sex on its platforms. That lawsuit is still pending.
Snap’s “harmful design features create an environment in which predators can easily target children through sextortion schemes and other forms of sexual abuse,” Torrez said in a statement. Sexual extortion, or sextortion, involves persuading a person to send explicit photos online and then threatening to make the images public unless the victim pays money or performs sexual favors.
PHOTO JOSE LUIS MAGANA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez
“Snap misled users into believing that photos and videos uploaded to their platform would disappear, but predators can capture this content permanently and have created a virtual repository of child sexual images that are traded, sold and stored indefinitely,” Torrez said.
In a statement, Snap said it shares Mr. Torrez’s and the public’s concerns about young people’s online safety.
“We understand that online threats continue to evolve and we will continue to work diligently to address these critical issues,” the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company said. “We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our trust and safety teams over the past few years and have designed our service to promote online safety by moderating content and enabling direct messaging with close friends and family.”
According to the complaint, minors report having more online sexual interactions on Snapchat than on any other platform, and more sex trafficking victims are recruited on Snapchat than on any other platform.
Before the trial, New Mexico conducted a months-long undercover investigation into child sexual abuse images on Snapchat. According to Torrez’s affidavit, the investigation uncovered a “vast network of dark web sites dedicated to sharing stolen, nonconsensual sexual images on Snap,” finding more than 10,000 records related to Snap and child sexual abuse material over the past year. That included information about children under the age of 13 being sexually assaulted.
As part of the undercover investigation, the New Mexico Department of Justice created a fake Snapchat account for a 14-year-old girl named Heather, who found and exchanged messages with accounts with names such as “child.rape” and “pedo_lover10.”
Snapchat, according to the complaint, “was by far the largest source of images and videos among the dark web sites investigated.” Investigators also found Snapchat accounts that openly distributed and sold child pornography directly on the platform.