Newly unredacted internal messages and documents, including a “Sextortion handbook,” suggest Snapchat‘s owners knew the platform posed risks to underaged users but failed to take adequate action, an updated lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit, initially filed by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez on September 6 and updated on October 1, alleges Snap Inc. had knowledge of a “handbook” circulating on the dark web that gave instructions on how to use Snap Maps to target a school by “tap[ping] on the screen to view any snap stories that might have been shared by students who share snap stories with the ‘snap maps’ options enabled.”
It also alleges that in 2022 “Snap employees were discussing 10,000 user reports of sextortion each month, while acknowledging that these reports ‘likely represent a small fraction of this abuse.'”
Torrez’s suit alleges Snap employees pointed to “a case where an account had 75 different reports against it since Oct. ’21, mentioning nudes, minors, and extortion, yet the account was still active.”
The lawsuit also alleges that internal complaints were made by Snap “that identifying and protecting minors from sexually explicit content and predatory users would overburden its moderators, ‘create disproportionate admin costs,’ and should not be its responsibility.”
In response to the updated suit, a spokesperson for Snap told Newsweek it continues to evolve Snapchat’s safety mechanisms and policies.
“We designed Snapchat as a place to communicate with a close circle of friends, with built-in safety guardrails, and have made deliberate design choices to make it difficult for strangers to discover minors on our service,” a statement read.
“We care deeply about our work here and it pains us when bad actors abuse our service. We know that no one person, agency, or company can advance this work alone, which is why we are working collaboratively across the industry, government, and law enforcement to exchange information and concept stronger defenses.”
Snap noted it is aware that the Snapchat platform’s focus on one-to-one communications is not risk-free and, like other social media platforms, may be exploited by bad actors. It also said the issues mentioned in Torrez’s complaint are neither new nor unique to Snapchat and are issues the platform has been working to address for a number of years in collaboration with law enforcement, online safety experts, industry peers, policymakers, parents, educators and young people themselves.
Torrez’s updated claim follows on from the initial (heavily redacted) lawsuit filed on September 6, in which the Attorney General said that Snap’s “harmful design features create an environment where predators can easily target children through sextortion schemes and other forms of sexual abuse.”
In response at the time, Snap, based in Santa Monica, California, released a statement saying: “We understand that online threats continue to evolve and we will continue to work diligently to address these critical issues.”
“We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our trust and safety teams over the past several years, and designed our service to promote online safety by moderating content and enabling direct messaging with close friends and family.”
A stock image of three teens scrolling through social media on their phones. New Mexico filed an updated, unredacted lawsuit alleging Snapchat knowingly endangered minors by ignoring various reports of abuse.
Raul_Mellado/Getty Images
The October 1 complaint claims that as early as 2019, Snap employees were aware that users could easily find minors on the platform by searching for terms like “underage.”
In the updated, unredacted court filing, there is a claim that, in 2022, Snap employees reportedly acknowledged several internal issues with Snapchat’s features. They allegedly recognized that the Quick Add feature was suggesting adult strangers to underage users, and that Snap Map potentially allowed adults to locate minors. In response to this, employees allegedly discussed implementing stronger warnings for these features.
Specifically, the lawsuit claims existence of an internal custodial document titled, “Snap Safety and Privacy Principles for Minors (13–15-year-olds),” which stated that “geofilters” were considered a “residual risk” in terms of “expos[ing] precise location of minors beyond their opted-in friends.”
The unredacted lawsuit additionally alleges that a Snap executive said in a 2022 email: “I don’t think we can say that we actually verify” users’ age. “[T]he app, like many other platforms, doesn’t use an age-verification system, so any child who knows how to type a fake birthday can create an account.”
Torrez’s document further alleges that Snap CEO Evan Spiegel prioritized the platform’s design over implementing safety mechanisms, often dismissing concerns raised by employees. This prioritization of aesthetics over safety, says the claim, was evident in Spiegel’s decision to reject preserving images categorized as abuse, stating that Snap did not want to be “responsible for storing that stuff.”
This is not the first time New Mexico has sued a social media platform. On December 6 2023, the Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Meta for similar reasons: failing to protect children against online harms including sexual abuse and online trafficking.
A spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Justice told Newsweek that the unredacted material was made available for Snap to review before being made public, adding that the social media company is still within deadline to respond to the complaint, noting that “the State’s complaint against Meta survived motions to dismiss and is now in the discovery process”.
In terms of the desired outcome of this filing, “the Attorney General wants Snap both to comply with the law and with its public statements” in order to ensure “a safe space for children on the platform and to fully and promptly warn parents and kids about the risks of using Snapchat,” added the spokesperson.
