Torrez claimed investigators focused on child exploitation and human trafficking after concluding that Meta is failing to provide adequate measures to protect children’s profiles from being exploited by predatory adults online. The civil lawsuit also relies on data from numerous recent criminal cases in which predators used Facebook or Instagram accounts to actively groom children.
According to the lawsuit, accounts that show an interest in sexual content get approached by predatory individuals very quickly. Quite alarmingly, one of the test accounts joined a group for job-seeking in New Mexico.
The fake account of a girl was soon contacted by a member of the group who offered a price if she indulged in a pornographic video. Some of these ‘recruiting’ attempts were so disturbing, said Torrez, that his office has referred them for potential prosecution.
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, Torrez further adds:
The features of the platform itself are not engineered in a way to prevent this matchmaking from likely predators and likely victims.
Meta states it works to prevent predatory adults from contacting minors on its platforms. However, the civil lawsuit claims all test accounts were flooded with requests from adults who engaged in much more than untoward compliments.
