AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Snapchat is a super popular social media app for teenagers. And because of that, it also attracts a lot of bad actors. Now, unsealed internal documents show that employees have been raising alarms about this problem for years. NPR's Dara Kerr reports. And a warning - this story contains information about child sexual abuse.
DARA KERR, BYLINE: New Mexico's attorney general, Raul Torrez, had a hunch. He suspected that sexual predators were using Snapchat to groom kids, so he dispatched a team of agents to pose as teenagers on the app. He says he had no idea how bad it was.
RAUL TORREZ: I did not expect to see the volume and the level of aggressiveness that we have seen from these undercover operations.
KERR: His agents found examples of child exploitation and drugs and weapons being sold to youth. He says it was a stark example of the black market operating out in the open.
TORREZ: It surprised me, frankly, how quickly predators had migrated from those dark and sort of hard-to-find corners of the internet onto mainstream social media platforms.
KERR: Torrez filed a lawsuit against Snapchat last month, alleging the app's design makes it easy for predators to approach children. He has a similar case against Facebook and Instagram parent Meta. In the Snapchat case, unsealed documents show employees were alarmed about the extent of the problem.
TORREZ: Snap had numerous individuals inside the company raising red flags about potential harm.
KERR: An internal email shows the company received around 10,000 reports of sextortion per month. Employees pointed to one account that had 75 complaints against it, and it wasn't taken down. Internally, Snapchat said that addressing child grooming would create privacy issues and be too expensive.
Earlier this year, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin grilled social media executives on the Hill, and he singled out Snapchat.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DICK DURBIN: As early as 2017, law enforcement identified Snapchat as the pedophile's go-to sexual exploitation tool.
KERR: Durbin described a 12-year-old girl who was groomed by a sexual predator for more than two years. Here's CEO Evan Spiegel responding.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
EVAN SPIEGEL: Senator, that behavior is disgusting and reprehensible.
KERR: Spiegel said the app has tools for reporting inappropriate behavior, and the company's work with law enforcement has led to more than a thousand arrests. A Snapchat spokesperson didn't directly address the allegations in the New Mexico lawsuit but told NPR, quote, "it pains us when bad actors abuse our service." Raul Torrez says the company needs to do more.
Dara Kerr, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELMIENE SONG, "MARKING MY TIME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
