Snapchat sued by New Mexico for failing to protect children from sexual exploitation

New Mexico said Thursday it has filed a lawsuit against Snapchat’s owner, Snap Inc., alleging the messaging app’s policies and design features facilitate the sharing of child sexual exploitation material.

The lawsuit filed by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez said a months-long investigation found Snapchat was a primary platform for sextortion, in which a predator coerces a minor into sending explicit photos or videos and threatens to share the content unless there is more sexual content or money is paid.

A Snap spokesperson said the company is looking into the complaint and will respond in court.

Snap has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its trust and safety teams and will continue to work collaboratively with law enforcement, online safety experts and other groups, the spokesperson said.

Snapchat, which is extremely popular among teenagers and young users, is known for messages that disappear within 24 hours.

“Snap misled users into thinking that photos and videos sent to their platform would disappear, but predators can permanently capture this content and have created a virtual directory of child sexual images that are traded, sold and stored indefinitely.” Torrez said in a statement.

As part of its investigation, the state Department of Justice opened a Snapchat account for a 14-year-old girl named Heather, who exchanged messages with an account called “child.rape” and others with explicit names.

Investigators also found 10,000 records of Snap content and child sexual abuse on dark web sites, saying Snapchat was “by far the largest source of images and videos among the dark web sites investigated.”

New Mexico sued Meta Platforms in December over similar allegations of failing to protect children from sexual abuse and predation.

(Reporting by Dang in Austin; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Mark Porter)