New Mexico sues Snapchat over child sexual extortion claims

New Mexico's attorney general, Raúl Torrez, has initiated legal action against Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, alleging that the platform's design and policies contribute to the sharing of child sexual abuse material and facilitate exploitation. The lawsuit, filed in Santa Fe, claims that Snapchat promotes not only sexual abuse but also child trafficking and drug-related activities. Torrez previously filed a similar lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, which is still pending. The lawsuit highlights the dangers of sextortion, where individuals are coerced into sending explicit images under the threat of exposure. Torrez criticized Snapchat for misleading users about the permanence of shared content, stating that predators can capture and store these images indefinitely. Snap has acknowledged the concerns regarding online safety and expressed its commitment to addressing these issues. Prior to the lawsuit, New Mexico's Department of Justice conducted an extensive undercover investigation into child sexual abuse images on Snapchat. This investigation uncovered a significant network of dark web sites dedicated to sharing non-consensual sexual images sourced from the platform, revealing over 10,000 records related to child sexual abuse material within a year. Alarmingly, some of these records involved minors under the age of 13. The investigation included the creation of a decoy account for a 14-year-old girl, which led to interactions with accounts that had explicit names related to child exploitation. The findings indicated that Snapchat was the predominant source of child abuse images among the dark web sites examined, raising serious concerns about the platform's role in facilitating such criminal activities.