The unsealed New Mexico Snapchat lawsuit alleges the company ignored child safety

On September 5, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed a lawsuit against Snap. Torrez claimed that Snapchat has become a platform rife with sexual exploitation, child grooming and other dangerous behaviors. That legal complaint was heavily redacted, but today, Torrez announced in a press release that he has filed an unsealed complaint, which goes into detail on how Snap allegedly knowingly created an environment that exposed children to sexual predators.

The unredacted accusations include how Snap employees encountered 10,000 sextortion cases each month. Still, the company never warned users because it did not want to “strike fear” among them. The statement also mentioned that Snap employees regularly ignored user reports related to grooming and sextortion. An account with 75 separate reports remains active, and Snap refused to touch any of this content, citing “disproportionate admin costs.”

Snapchat’s disappearing messages have long been a draw of the platform, but the suit alleges that they lull users into a false sense of security. Therefore, predators find it easier to solicit explicit images from users before extorting them for money, or these images will be sent to friends and family.

The unredacted complaint also notes that Snapchat’s “Quick Add” feature was suggesting adult strangers to minors, and Snap Map also lets adults find minors’ accounts. Quick Add was even proven to be dangerous as a New Mexico man, Alejandro Marquez, had used it to lure and rape an 11-year-old girl, as mentioned in the complaint.

The complaint also alleges that Snap's upper management routinely ignored former trust and safety employees who pushed for additional and improved safety mechanisms. CEO Evan Spiegel “prioritized design” over safety and even refused to preserve abusive images for review and for law enforcement to use as proof. The company also didn’t keep its child sex abuse images database updated, even rolling back changes and deleting evidence of matches.

Even worse, predators using Snapchat have taken to creating a “Sextortion handbook” to teach others how to target users at schools. Compounded with the fact that 90 percent of all reports are ignored and 30 percent of victims never received any assistance from Snap, predators could essentially roam freely.

That’s not the only issue New Mexico is concerned with. The complaint also accuses Snap of tolerating drug and gun sales. Drug dealers freely used the platform to advertise their wares without repercussions while also gaining “a huge amount of subscribers.” Teens have even died after using drugs they bought after seeing them advertised on Snapchat.

As harmful as these dangers are, Snapchat makes it difficult for parents to monitor their children’s Snapchat use, as only 0.33 percent of teens have joined the Family Center. Snapchat also doesn’t truly verify a user’s age, allowing fake birthdays to pass inspection. This contradicts Snap’s claims that it doesn’t let children under 13 years old use the app.

Based on these accusations, it would be easy to conclude that Snapchat is a dangerous platform for underage users. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s Director of Corporate and Strategic Initiatives, Lina Nealon, said: “In my conversations with law enforcement, child safety experts, lawyers, survivors, and youth, I ask them what the most dangerous app is, and without fail, Snap is in the top two.”

In a statement Snap sent to Engadget last month when the lawsuit was filed, the company claimed to be diligently removing bad actors and working with law enforcement. Today, Snap provided the following statement in regards to the unsealed complaint:

"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. We continue to evolve our safety mechanisms and policies, from leveraging advanced technology to detect and block certain activity, to prohibiting friending from suspicious accounts, to working alongside law enforcement and government agencies, among so much more.

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."