Snapchat Failed to Properly Warn About ‘Sexual Extortion Schemes’ Targeting Underage Users: Lawsuit

According to an unredacted version of the lawsuit released Tuesday, Snapchat failed to adequately warn its users about the scope of rampant “sexual extortion schemes” targeting underage users — even as employees debated internally about how to address the crisis without causing panic.

The new details came to light in a complaint originally filed last month by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez.

It alleges that a photo-sharing app popular with children is a prime platform for online sexual predators who force minors to send graphic images and then use them for blackmail.

Internal records showed that Snap received “approximately 10,000 user reports each month of sexual harassment,” a member of the company’s trust and safety team said in a November 2022 email, according to the updated lawsuit. The employee described the situation as “extremely disturbing.”

Another employee responded that the data, while “huge,” likely represented a “small fraction of the abuse” that actually occurred on the app because the complaint said it was an “embarrassment” for users to report it.

“It is disheartening to see that Snap employees have raised many red flags that continue to be ignored by management,” Torrez said in a statement Tuesday.

The unredacted lawsuit also included Snap’s internal marketing briefings sent in December 2022, which acknowledged that “sexting or sending nudes has become common behavior” that could “lead to disproportionate consequences and serious harm” to users.

According to the lawsuit, the document calls on Snap to provide users with information about threats “without instilling fear among Snapchat users.”

“We cannot tell our viewers NOT to send nudes; “such an approach is probably futile, ‘tone-deaf’ and unrealistic,” the document said. “That said, we also cannot say, ‘If you do THIS: (1) don’t show your face in the photo, (2) don’t have tattoos, piercings or other distinctive physical features in sight, etc.’

A Snap spokesperson said the app was designed with “built-in guardrails” and “thoughtful design choices to make it more difficult for strangers to find minors on our service.”

“We are constantly evolving our security mechanisms and policies, from using advanced technology to detect and block certain activities, to prohibiting friendships with suspicious accounts, to cooperation with law enforcement and government agencies, and much more,” the spokesman said in a statement. .

“We care very much about our work here and it hurts us when inappropriate entities abuse our services,” he added in a statement.

Snapchat — known for messages that disappear within 24 hours — is one of several social media apps that have drawn the ire of lawmakers for allegedly failing to protect children online.

As The Post reported, Snap has broken with other social media companies and supported the Children’s Online Safety Act, a bipartisan bill that would impose a legal “duty of care” on companies to ensure their apps don’t fuel exploitation. child sexual abuse and other online harm.

In March 2022, a Snap consultant warned company employees that the “ephemeral nature of Snaps” could lull young users into a “false sense of privacy.”

Elsewhere in a complaint filed in New Mexico in 2022, a Snap executive sent an email to colleagues expressing concern about the company’s ability to “actually verify” users’ ages – despite claiming it does not allow children under 13 to use Snapchat .

“The app, like many other platforms, does not use an age verification system, so any child who knows how to enter a false date of birth can create an account,” the director said.

In August 2022, a Snap employee discussed the importance of taking steps to “ensure that user reports of grooming and sexual harassment do not continue to be ignored.”

Other employees responded to the email, with one of them citing an instance in which a specific user’s account had received “75 different reports mentioning nudity, minors, and extortion” since October 21, 2021, even though the account was still active.”

At one point, a bored Snap employee confessed that the app had been “taken over by these sextortions – right now.”

“We’ve been twiddling our thumbs and wringing our hands all this damn year,” the employee testified in the complaint.

Last December, the New Mexico attorney general’s office sued Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, for failing to protect children from exposure to sexual predators on the apps.