California Attorney General sues Snap over fentanyl sales and child safety failures

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a lawsuit against Snap Inc. alleging the company has failed to protect minors from drug dealers using Snapchat to market fentanyl and other illicit substances, and from sexual predators exploiting the platform's disappearing-message and location features. The complaint asserts that Snapchat's design choices—including ephemeral content and geolocation tools—facilitate criminal contact with children, and seeks civil penalties, injunctive relief and platform design changes.

Guardii's anti-grooming and anti-sextortion filters operate within Snapchat direct messages in real time, flagging predatory language, solicitation patterns and image-based abuse including AI-generated child sexual abuse material before the message is delivered or while an exchange is under way. Where disappearing content obscures retrospective investigation, detection at the point of transmission captures the threat as it occurs, alerts the parent or institution responsible for the child, and preserves evidence for law enforcement escalation—addressing the design vulnerabilities the California complaint identifies without requiring Snap to redesign its core architecture.