New Mexico’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Snap, accusing the company of failing to protect children from sextortion, sexual exploitation and other harms on Snapchat. The lawsuit says Snapchat’s features “promote the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and facilitate child sexual exploitation.”
The state’s Justice Department conducted a months-long investigation into Snapchat and found “a vast network of dark web sites dedicated to the sharing of stolen, non-consensual sexual images from Snap.” It claims to have found more than 10,000 records related to Snap and child sexual abuse material “in the past year alone,” and said Snapchat was “by far” the largest source of images and videos on dark web sites it investigated.
In its complaint [PDF], the agency accused the app of being “a breeding ground for predators to collect sexually explicit images of children and to find, groom, and extort money from them.” It states that “offenders circulate sextortion scripts” that contain instructions on how to victimize minors. It claims that these documents are publicly available and are being actively used against victims, but they “have not yet been blacklisted by Snapchat.”
In addition, investigators determined that many of the accounts openly sharing and selling CSAM on Snapchat are connected to each other through the app’s recommendation algorithm. The lawsuit claims that “Snap designed its platform to be addictive, particularly for young people, causing some of its users to suffer from depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation, body dysmorphia, and other mental health issues.”
Snapchat’s complaint follows a similar child safety lawsuit the state filed against Meta last December.
“Our undercover investigation revealed that Snapchat’s harmful design features create an environment where predators can easily target children through sextortion schemes and other forms of sexual exploitation,” Attorney General Raul Torrez said in a statement.
“Snap has misled users by leading them to believe that photos and videos sent over its platform will disappear, but predators can capture this content permanently and have created a virtual yearbook of sexual images of children that are traded, sold, and stored indefinitely.
Through our lawsuit against Meta and Snap, the New Mexico Department of Justice will continue to hold these platforms accountable for prioritizing profits over the safety of children.”
Gather enough Star Trek fans in a room and the conversation will inevitably turn to which of the series’ cinematic outings is the worst. The general consensus is that The Final Frontier, Insurrection, and Nemesis are fighting for the undeserved trophy.
Each film has a small army of fans who will defend each entry’s campy excesses, boldness, and tone. (I’m a fan of watching The Final Frontier every five years, mostly to enjoy Jerry Goldsmith’s score.) Thankfully, all such discussions will stop forever on January 24, 2024, when Star Trek: Section 31 debuts on Paramount+.