New Mexico attorney general says internal Snap documents show the company allowed spread of sextortion on Snapchat
The New Mexico attorney general said Tuesday that internal documents from Snapchat released as part of an ongoing lawsuit show how the platform failed to manage and notify users about sextortion on the platform.
The New Mexico attorney general said Tuesday that internal documents from Snapchat released as part of an ongoing lawsuit show how the platform failed to manage and notify users about sextortion on the platform.
The suit, which Attorney General Raúl Torrez originally filed in September, includes the text of some of Snap’s internal correspondence. He claims the correspondence, which NBC News has not seen firsthand, shows the company “ignoring reports of sextortion, failing to implement verifiable age-verification, admitting to features that connect minors with adults.”
“It is disheartening to see that Snap employees have raised many red flags that have continued to be ignored by executives,” Torrez said in a statement. “What is even more disturbing is that unredacted information shows that the addicting features on Snapchat were blatantly acknowledged and encouraged to remain active on the platform. I will always work to hold companies, like Snap and Meta, accountable to create a safer user experience.”
According to the suit, in November 2022, “Snap employees were discussing 10,000 user reports of sextortion each month,” which is most likely “a small fraction of this abuse.”
In addition, the suit alleges internal documents show that reports of grooming and sextortion made about specific users largely went unanswered or unaddressed. In January 2022, the suit says, an employee disclosed over Slack that “over 90% of account-level reports are ignored today and instead we just prompt the person to block the other person.”
Rating: 5