Meta Accused of Creating “Breeding Ground” for Child Predators in New Mexico Lawsuit

New Mexico's Attorney General Raúl Torrez has filed a civil suit accusing Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, of exposing children to sexually explicit materials that promote child abuse and human trafficking. In doing so, Torrez alleges Meta has enabled a “breeding ground” for predators looking to take advantage of children.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of a series of investigations conducted by the Wall Street Journal. The investigations examine Facebook's child safety policies and enforcement systems. The Wall Street Journal's thorough investigation caught the eyes of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, putting more pressure on Facebook to offer more transparency on the company's child safety policies.

The New Mexico Attorney General’s office also conducted its own investigation into the social media platform’s operations. The state created decoy accounts posing as children under the age of 14. During the investigation, state officials found evidence that Meta was pushing sexually explicit material to the decoy accounts. The decoy accounts were also led to unmoderated Facebook groups that helped facilitate the distribution of child pornography and the sale of commercial sex.

The lawsuit includes a case study of a decoy account that was created by state officials. The account explicitly stated that the user was 13 years old; however, Facebook eventually began pushing targeted advertisements to the account. The lawsuit explains that Meta’s algorithm “recognized her actual age for advertising purposes, but was not used for her safety.”

State officials also say that a majority of the followers of the 13-year-old’s account were men aged 18 to 40. Additionally, the account received numerous private messages that featured exposed genitalia.

AG Torrez maintains, “Mr. Zuckerberg and other Meta executives are aware of the serious harm their products can pose to young users, and yet they have failed to make sufficient changes to their platforms that would prevent the sexual exploitation of children.”

The lawsuit accuses Meta of exposing children to accounts that encourage the purchase of child pornography. Other accounts allegedly lure users in to engage in sex trafficking. By exposing children to these accounts, Meta is allowing adult users to gain the contact information of child users putting them at higher risk for abuse and exploitation, alleges the complaint.

The lawsuit explains, “Meta’s business model of profit over child safety and business practices of misrepresenting the amount of dangerous material and conduct to which its platforms expose children violates New Mexico law,” adding “Meta should be held accountable for the harms it has inflicted on New Mexico’s children.”

This is not the first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the social media giant. In October Meta was among other social media platforms that were sued by school districts and at least 33 states. In those lawsuits, the platform was accused of contributing to the mental health crisis plaguing the nation’s teenage population.

Meta has unsurprisingly pushed back against the claims made in the lawsuit. Company spokesperson Nkechi Nneji shared in a statement, “We use sophisticated technology, hire child safety experts, report content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and share information and tools with other companies and law enforcement, including state attorneys general, to help root out predators.”

Meta maintains that they have removed hundreds of thousands of accounts, Facebook groups, and other devices when there have been violations of its child safety policies.