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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Katie McQue

Meta platforms are marketplaces for child predators claims lawsuit

Meta's logo is seen on a sign at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
Meta ‘proactively served and directed children to egregious, sexually explicit images’, says the lawsuit. Photograph: Godofredo A Vásquez/AP

Meta has allowed its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to become marketplaces for child predators, the state of New Mexico alleges in a lawsuit filed against the company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

The lawsuit claims that Meta “proactively served and directed [children] to egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content”. It claims Meta “enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos”. The company is also accused of fostering unmoderated user groups devoted to facilitating and selling child sexual exploitation content.

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