New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez said on Wednesday that the state is suing Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, claiming the social media company failed to protect children from sexual abuse, online grooming and human trafficking.
"Our investigation into the Meta social media platform shows that they are not a safe space for children, but are a primary venue for online predators to trade child pornography and lure minors to engage in sexual acts," Trez said in a statement. Meta, he said, enabled "dozens of adults to find, contact and pressure children to provide sexually explicit photos of themselves or participate in pornographic videos."
Meta responded that it uses advanced technology, employs child safety experts, reports content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and shares information and tools with "other companies and law enforcement, including state attorneys general, to help root out online predators."
Meta said that in August alone, the company closed more than 500,000 accounts for violating its child sexual exploitation policy.
Trez said Zuckerberg and other Meta executives "aware that their products could cause serious harm to young users, yet they failed to make enough changes to the platform to prevent the sexual exploitation of children."
Montana Attorney General Austin Knutson announced Tuesday that the state is suing Meta, saying Instagram is "intentionally addictive, especially to minors."
In October, more than 40 U.S. states sued Meta, accusing their social media platform of being addictive and exacerbating the mental health crisis among teenagers.
Attorneys general in 33 states, including California and New York, said Meta repeatedly misled the public about the dangers of its platform and knowingly induced addictive and compulsive use of social media in young children and teens. Similar lawsuits have been filed in eight other U.S. states and Washington, D.C.
The cases are the latest in a series of legal actions against social media companies on behalf of children and teenagers.
On Tuesday, U.S. Senators Ed Markey and Bill Cassidy said Meta was deliberately evading children's privacy laws and called on the company to stop the practice.