Protecting Children Online: Exposing Social Media's Dark Side
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, alleging that the social media platforms are steering children to explicit content and enabling child predators to find and contact minors. Torrez claims that the platforms are not providing safe spaces for children and instead allowing predators to trade child pornography and solicit children for sex. The lawsuit comes after an undercover investigation in which phony accounts of fictional teens and preteens were set up, and Meta's algorithms recommended sexual content to those accounts. Meta has responded by stating that it uses measures to prevent sexual predators from targeting children and has disabled over 500,000 accounts in one month for violating child safety policies.