Oct. 2 – The New Mexico Department of Justice on Tuesday filed an amended complaint in its lawsuit against the parent company of popular social media app Snapchat, alleging that the platform has tolerated the sale of guns and drugs and sexual abuse of minors has allowed.
The amended complaint, filed in the First Judicial District Court, reverses the redaction of portions of information previously withheld in the original version filed in early September.
Many of the withheld sections in the 164-page document concealed internal data and communications between employees of Snapchat’s owners, Snap Inc.
The lawsuit, the result of an undercover investigation, accuses Snap of violating New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act by making Snapchat addictive to young users, allowing child sexual abuse material, effectively creating a virtual market for illegal guns and drugs and to give child sex abusers the opportunity to groom themselves. and extort children.
“This filing is further confirmation that Snapchat’s harmful design features create an environment that promotes sextortion, sexual abuse, and unwanted contact between adults and minors,” Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a press release announcing the amended complaint. “It is disheartening to see that Snap employees have raised many warning signs that continue to be ignored by executives.”
When asked why much of the original complaint was redacted, Lauren Rodriguez, spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Justice, wrote in an email: “New Mexico law, like that of many other states, material produced in an investigation as confidential.
“However, today’s unredacted material was made available to Snap’s team to review before being made public,” she added.
An attorney working for Snap Inc. stated in the lawsuits, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Internal communications among Snap employees uncovered in unredacted portions of the complaint include doubts that the platform can say it verifies the age of its users and admissions that drug and gun sales and sexual abuse of children were rampant on the platform, as were concerns that the company did not. do enough about it.
According to a previously redacted section in the complaint, former Snap employees said in February 2021 that CEO Evan Spiegel was not interested in prioritizing security issues from 2015 to 2020.
In January 2022, Snap employees said in an internal Slack chat that “naturally, more than 90% of account-level reports are ignored” and instead the company asks a user to block someone who is behaving inappropriately, according to the complaint.
In November 2022, another previously redacted section reads: “Snap employees discussed 10,000 user reports of sextortion each month, while acknowledging that these reports ‘likely represent a small portion of this abuse.'”
And while the company acknowledged that it was necessary to prevent reports of “grooming” and “sextortion” from falling through the cracks, Snap also complained that internally identifying and protecting minors from sexually explicit content and predators “was the would overburden moderators, ‘would cause disproportionate administrative costs’, and ‘should not happen’. his responsibility,” the amended complaint states.
In another disclosed portion of the complaint, the New Mexico Department of Justice also alleges that Snapchat enabled minors to contact adults who were strangers, including through the app’s “Quick Add” or search features . Snap employees were also made aware that the Quick Add feature was connecting users with people who sell drugs.
Last year, 29-year-old Alejandro Marquez was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to raping a then 11-year-old girl in Albuquerque. He met the girl through Snapchat’s Quick Add feature, according to a Department of Justice news release.
The department requests that Snap’s activities be declared a public nuisance, and that the company abate that public nuisance, with a maximum civil penalty of $5,000 per violation of the Unfair Practices Act and an “expropriation of wrongfully obtained profits and data ‘.
Esteban Candelaria is a member of the staff at Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. He is responsible for child welfare and the state’s Department of Children, Youth and Families. Learn more about Report for America at reportforamerica.org.
