New Mexico Sues Snap Inc. Regarding Children's Failure To Protect Children From Sexual Exploitation

Attorney General's Office News Mexico (photo: x @AsTimeGoesBy0 ·)

JAKARTA - The state of New Mexico has officially sued Snap Inc., the parent company of the popular Snapchat app, on charges that the platform facilitates the spread of child sexual exploitation material. The lawsuit was filed by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, who alleges that Snapchat's design policies and features are helping child sexual exploitation perpetrators, especially through sextortion practices.

In the lawsuit, Torrez stated that Snap has created a dangerous environment for children, where predators force child victims to send explicit content and threaten to spread the content unless further demands are met. Snapchat, known for its missing message feature in 24 hours, is called a misleading tool because predators can still capture and store the content indefinitely.

"Snap has misled its users by making them believe that content sent on the platform will disappear," Torrez said. "However, predators easily capture these images and create a kind of virtual 'annual book' containing child-traded, sold, and kept sexual images indefinitely."

As part of this investigation, the New Mexico Department of Justice created a Snapchat feed account with the identity of a 14-year-old child. The account then got explicit messages from several users, including an account with the name "child.rape".

Further investigations found 10,000 records of Snapchat-related and child sexual abuse material scattered on dark sites, with Snapchat being called the largest source of the images and videos.

Snap Inc. has not yet provided an official response to this allegation.

This is not the first time New Mexico has sued a technology company for alleged failure to protect children. In December last year, New Mexico also sued Meta Platforms on similar charges, namely failing to prevent child sexual exploitation on its platform. These two technology companies are now under intense scrutiny, particularly regarding how they protect the security and privacy of child users.