New Mexico Attorney General Files Lawsuit Claiming Snapchat Allows Child Sexual Extortion

AP Technology Writer (AP) — The New Mexico attorney general has filed a lawsuit against the company behind Snapchat, alleging that the site’s design and policies promote the sharing of child sexual abuse material and facilitate the sexual exploitation of children.

Attorney General Raul Torrez filed the lawsuit against Snap Inc. on Thursday in state court in Santa Fe. In addition to sexual abuse, the lawsuit alleges that the company openly promotes child trafficking, drug trafficking and weapons trafficking.

Last December, Torrez filed a similar lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, saying it allows predators to trade child abuse material and solicit minors for sex on its platforms. That lawsuit is still pending.

Snap’s “harmful design features create an environment where 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 someone to send explicit photos online and then threatening to make the images public unless the victim pays money or provides sexual favors.

“Snap has misled users into believing that photos and videos posted to its platform will disappear, but predators can permanently capture this content and have created a virtual yearbook of child pornography images that are traded, sold and stored indefinitely,” Torrez said.

Snap said in a statement that it shares 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, California-based company said. “We’ve 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 complaint, minors report having more sexual interactions online on Snapchat than on any other platform. Additionally, Snapchat recruits more sex trafficking victims than any other platform.

Before the lawsuit, 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 from Snap,” uncovering more than 10,000 records related to Snap and child sexual abuse material over the past year. This included information relating to minors under the age of 13 being sexually abused.

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, the lawsuit alleges, “was by far the largest source of images and videos among the dark web sites examined.” Investigators also found Snapchat accounts openly distributing and selling child abuse images directly on the platform.

Barbara Ortutay, The Associated Press