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Employees fretted over company’s ‘negligible’ response to child grooming, according to internal documents made public in lawsuit
Meta estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram receive online sexual harassment each day, including “pictures of adult genitalia”, according to internal company documents made public late Wednesday.
The unsealed legal filing includes several allegations against the company based on information the New Mexico attorney general’s office received from presentations by Meta employees and communications between staff. The documents describe an incident in 2020 when the 12-year-old daughter of an executive at Apple was solicited via IG Direct, Instagram’s messaging product.
“This is the kind of thing that pisses Apple off to the extent of threatening to remove us from the App Store,” a Meta employee fretted, according to the documents. A senior Meta employee described how his own daughter had been solicited via Instagram in testimony to the US Congress late last year. His efforts to fix the problem were ignored, he said.
The filing is the latest in a lawsuit initiated by the New Mexico attorney general’s office on 5 December, which alleges Meta’s social networks have become marketplaces for child predators. Raúl Torrez, the state’s attorney general, has accused Meta of enabling adults to find, message and groom children. The company has denied the suit’s claims, saying it “mischaracterizes our work using selective quotes and cherry-picked documents”.
www.theguardian.com
Meta estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram receive online sexual harassment each day, including “pictures of adult genitalia”, according to internal company documents made public late Wednesday.
The unsealed legal filing includes several allegations against the company based on information the New Mexico attorney general’s office received from presentations by Meta employees and communications between staff. The documents describe an incident in 2020 when the 12-year-old daughter of an executive at Apple was solicited via IG Direct, Instagram’s messaging product.
“This is the kind of thing that pisses Apple off to the extent of threatening to remove us from the App Store,” a Meta employee fretted, according to the documents. A senior Meta employee described how his own daughter had been solicited via Instagram in testimony to the US Congress late last year. His efforts to fix the problem were ignored, he said.
The filing is the latest in a lawsuit initiated by the New Mexico attorney general’s office on 5 December, which alleges Meta’s social networks have become marketplaces for child predators. Raúl Torrez, the state’s attorney general, has accused Meta of enabling adults to find, message and groom children. The company has denied the suit’s claims, saying it “mischaracterizes our work using selective quotes and cherry-picked documents”.
Meta documents show 100,000 children sexually harassed daily on its platforms
Employees fretted over company’s ‘negligible’ response to child grooming, according to internal documents made public in lawsuit
