New Mexico’s attorney general has taken legal action against Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., by filing a lawsuit in state court in Santa Fe. The lawsuit alleges that Snapchat’s design and policies facilitate the sharing of child sexual abuse material and enable child sexual exploitation. Attorney General Raúl Torrez also accuses Snap Inc. of openly promoting child trafficking, drugs, and guns.
This is not the first time Torrez has taken legal action against a tech giant. In a similar lawsuit filed in December, he targeted Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, for allowing predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex on their platforms. The lawsuit against Meta is currently pending.
Torrez stated that Snap’s design features make it easy for predators to target children through sextortion schemes and other forms of sexual abuse. Sextortion involves coercing a person into sending explicit photos online and threatening to expose them unless certain demands are met. The attorney general also mentioned that despite Snap’s claim that photos and videos will disappear, predators can capture and store them indefinitely, creating a repository of child sexual images.
Snap responded to the lawsuit by expressing concern for the online safety of young users. The company emphasized its commitment to addressing evolving online threats and highlighted its investments in trust and safety teams to moderate content. Snap also mentioned that they have designed their service to promote online safety by enabling direct messaging with close friends and family.
The complaint highlighted that minors report having more online sexual interactions on Snapchat than on any other platform, with more sex trafficking victims recruited on Snapchat than on any other platform. The lawsuit followed a monthslong undercover investigation conducted by New Mexico into child sexual abuse images on Snapchat. The investigation uncovered a significant network of dark web sites sharing non-consensual sexual images from Snapchat, including records related to minors under 13 being sexually exploited.
As part of the investigation, the New Mexico Department of Justice created a decoy Snapchat account for a fictional 14-year-old named Heather, who engaged with accounts with disturbing names such as “child.rape” and “pedo_lover10.” Snapchat was identified as the primary source of images and videos among the dark web sites investigated, with accounts openly circulating and selling child abuse images on the platform.
