State of New Mexico files lawsuit against Snapchat for facilitating sextortion and grooming

According to the state of New Mexico, Snapchat is “among the most pernicious purveyors of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and harm-inducing features on children’s electronic devices.”
The indictment states that Snapchat pretends to be a child-friendly and safe social media platform.
However, Snapchat’s algorithmic recommendation systems are designed in such a way they “openly foster and promote illicit sexual material involving children and facilitate sextortion and the trafficking of children, drugs, and guns.”
The plaintiff argues that Snapchat has sacrificed the health and safety of a generation of children in New Mexico and beyond in favor of screen time and ad revenue.
The indictment says the platform’s recommendation system is designed to match children with adult predators and drug dealers, forsaking its obligation to provide a safe environment for its youngest and most vulnerable users.
“Snapchat is a breeding ground for predators to collect sexually explicit images of children and to find, groom, and extort them,” the state of New Mexico testifies.
Both internal and external sources have pointed out the risks and dangers the platform poses for years. Instead of acting on these warnings, Snapchat decided to do nothing because that would ‘overburden’ its administrators and create ‘disproportionate admin costs’.
“Snap’s design decisions and refusal to address glaring safety defects have engineered and amplified an internet forum ripe for abuse and rampant with illicit conduct and activity. Snap may claim that Snapchat is unlike other social media, but those claims are false and knowingly so,” the allegation says.
The plaintiff calls Snapchat’s conduct ‘dangerously deceptive’ and ‘unlawful’. Furthermore, it accuses Snapchat of deliberately giving a misleading picture of how much abuse takes place on the platform for one single purpose: not to worry users and parents.
“Snap profits from its exposure of young users to harmful material and its refusal to implement adequate design features that would protect children from sexual exploitation and harm.” The state of New Mexico wants the judge to hold Snapchat accountable for all the harm it has caused and to make its platform safe for children.
Snap has responded to the allegations made in the indictment.
“We designed Snapchat as a place to communicate with a close circle of friends, with built-in safety guardrails, and have made deliberate design choices to make it difficult for strangers to discover minors on our service. We continue to evolve our safety mechanisms and policies, from leveraging advanced technology to detect and block certain activity to prohibiting friending from suspicious accounts to working alongside law enforcement and government agencies, among so much more,” the statement says.
The company states it cares deeply about its work and that it hurts to see ‘bad actors’ abuse its service. To make its platform safer, Snap collaborates with other parties in the tech industry, government agencies and law enforcement authorities.
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