Snap sued by New Mexico over failure to protect children from sexual exploitation

By Sheila Dang

(Reuters) -New Mexico said on Thursday it filed a lawsuit against Snapchat owner Snap Inc alleging that the messaging app's policies and design features facilitate the sharing of child sexual exploitation material.

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

A Snap spokesperson said the company was reviewing the complaint and would respond in court.

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

Snapchat, which is wildly popular with teens and young users, is known for messages that disappear in 24 hours.

"Snap has misled users into believing that photos and videos sent on their platform will disappear, but predators can permanently capture this content and they have created a virtual yearbook of child sexual images that are traded, sold, and stored indefinitely," Torrez said in a statement.

As part of its investigation, the state's Department of Justice opened a decoy Snapchat account for a 14-year-old named Heather, which exchanged messages with an account called "child.rape" and others with explicit names.

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

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

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