New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta Platforms Inc. and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, alleging the company allowed child sexual abuse material to be distributed on its platforms.

The 227-page civil lawsuit alleges Facebook and Instagram created “prime locations” for “sexual predators that enabled child sexual abuse, solicitation, and trafficking,” CNBC reports.

“Over the past few months, the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office carried out an undercover investigation of Meta’s platforms, creating decoy accounts of children 14-years and younger,” a press release from Raúl Torrez’s office stated.

The undercover investigation allegedly found evidence the platforms:

  • Proactively served and directed the underage users a stream of egregious, sexually explicit images — even when the child has expressed no interest in this content
  • Enabled dozens of adults to find, contact, and press children into providing sexually explicit pictures of themselves or participate in pornographic videos.
  • Recommended that the children join unmoderated Facebook groups devoted to facilitating commercial sex.
  • Allowed Facebook and Instagram users to find, share, and sell an enormous volume of child pornography.
  • Allowed a fictitious mother to offer her 13-year-old daughter for sale to sex traffickers and to create a professional page to allow her daughter to share revenue from advertising.

“Our investigation into Meta’s social media platforms demonstrates that they are not safe spaces for children but rather prime locations for predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex,” said Attorney General Torrez.

“Mr. Zuckerberg and other Meta executives are aware of the serious harm their products can pose to young users, and yet they have failed to make sufficient changes to their platforms that would prevent the sexual exploitation of children,” Torrez added.

“Despite repeated assurances to Congress and the public that they can be trusted to police themselves, it is clear that Meta’s executives continue to prioritize engagement and ad revenue over the safety of the most vulnerable members of our society,” he continued.

Cont. from the press release:

As outlined in today’s filing, Meta fails to remove Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) across its platforms and enables adults to find, contact, and solicit underage users to produce illicit pornographic imagery and participate in commercial sex. The New Mexico Attorney General’s complaint also details how Meta harms children and teenagers through the addictive design of its platform, degrading users’ mental health, their sense of self-worth, and their physical safety.

The Office’s investigators found that certain child exploitative content is over ten times more prevalent on Facebook and Instagram than it is on Pornhub and OnlyFans. Moreover, while the images and case studies included in the complaint are shocking, the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office excluded many images its investigators found on Meta’s platforms from the complaint because they were deemed too graphic and disturbing. Nonetheless, the complaint opens with a black box warning regarding the censored sexually explicit and self-harm images that are included.

CNBC reports:

“Child exploitation is a horrific crime and online predators are determined criminals,” Meta said in a statement to CNBC. A spokesperson said that the company deploys “sophisticated technology, hire child safety experts, report content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and share information and tools with other companies and law enforcement, including state attorneys general, to help root out predators.”

The New Mexico suit follows coordinated legal actions against Meta by 42 other attorneys general in October. Those actions alleged that Facebook and Instagram directly targeted and were addictive to children and teens.

New Mexico’s suit, by contrast, alleges Meta and Zuckerberg violated the state’s Unfair Practice Act. The four-count suit alleges that the company and Zuckerberg engaged in “unfair trade practices” by facilitating the distribution of CSAM and the trafficking of minors, and undermined the health and safety of New Mexican children.

The lawsuit argues that Meta’s algorithms allegedly promote sex and exploitation content to users and that Facebook and Instagram lack “effective” age verification. The suit also alleges that the company failed to identify child sexual exploitation “networks” and to fully prevent users it had suspended for those violations from rejoining the platform using new accounts.

 

Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.


We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.