New Mexico Attorney General Files Major Lawsuit Against Snap for Child Sextortion and CSAM Distribution

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed a major enforcement lawsuit against Snap, Inc. alleging the company's design choices facilitate widespread child sextortion, sexual exploitation, and distribution of child sexual abuse material on Snapchat. The complaint alleges that sextortion is so prevalent on the platform that criminals circulate standardised sextortion scripts providing step-by-step instructions for victimising minors, that parents report children share more CSAM on Snapchat than on any other platform, that minors report having more online sexual interactions on Snapchat than on competing services, and that more sex trafficking victims are recruited via Snapchat than any other platform. Undercover state investigators found that Snapchat accounts openly capturing, circulating, and selling CSAM are algorithmically recommended to one another, and the platform fails to verify user ages, enabling minors to access illegal and age-inappropriate content.

The allegations describe a structural exploitation pathway enabled by platform architecture: ephemeral messaging that impedes external oversight, recommendation algorithms that surface abusive accounts to one another, and absence of age verification or behavioural monitoring. Detection at the message layer, rather than reliance on post-hoc reporting or manual review, is the operational answer to the gap the New Mexico lawsuit identifies. As a Meta Business Partner with integrations across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, Guardii analyses the shape and seriousness of direct-message conversations in real time, using anti-sextortion, anti-grooming and anti-CSAM detection modules to block or flag hostile contact, surface children at acute risk to parents and authorities, and interdict abuse before imagery is created or coercion succeeds.