Sued By New Mexico, Snapchat Accused Of Failing To Monitor Child Predators

Snap is sued by New Mexico (photo: dock. Snap)

JAKARTA The Attorney General of New Mexico has renewed his lawsuit against Snap, the developer of the Snapchat platform. In the lawsuit, it was noted that Snap was aware of the presence of child predators in its application.

Reporting from The Verge, the lawsuit that was just released did not change much. The reason is, the attorney general only added information from Snap employees about tens of thousands of reports related to harassment that are continuously received every month.

"The Snap employee discusses 10,000 user reports about sexual extortion every month, while acknowledging that these reports 'possibly represent a small part of this harassment' given the shame and other obstacles to reporting them," the attorney general wrote in his lawsuit.

The lawsuit also alluded to one of the cases deemed as evidence that Snap has been negligent in maintaining the security of its platform. The employee explained that Snap had received more than 75 reports against one of the same accounts.

This report, sent by users, "mentioned nude photos, minors, and extortion." This account should be handled quickly by Snap. However, what happened was the opposite. The account is still active after receiving dozens of reports.

This additional detail makes it clear that Snap is aware of its shortcomings in protecting minors. Instead of overcoming the problem quickly, Snap actually responded slowly because it prioritized other things.

"Former employees of Snap's trust and security department complained that they had little contact with top management," the lawsuit said. "There was a refusal in an attempt to add a security mechanism in the app because (CEO Snap) Evan Spiegel prioritized the design."

Once the lawsuit is updated, Snap also gives it a response on its official website. The company explains that it is always developing mechanisms and policies to detect and block suspicious activity from certain accounts.

"We designed Snapchat as a place to communicate with close friends, with built-in security barriers," Snap said. "We really care about our work here and we feel hurt when criminals abuse our services."