The New Mexico attorney general, Raúl Torrez, who has launched legal action against Meta for child trafficking on its platforms, says he believes the social media company is the “largest marketplace for predators and paedophiles globally”.

While Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other social media executives are being questioned on Wednesday in a congressional hearing about their role in online child sexual exploitation, Torrez tells the Guardian he believes that what his own investigation has already uncovered is “just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how widespread and well known this problem was inside the company”.

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Meta has been accused of failing to protect children from sexual exploitation and harm on its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram. The company is under the spotlight in the US as it faces a number of lawsuits and congressional hearings pertaining to the issue.

In December 2023, Torrez launched legal action against Meta, claiming that the company has allowed its social media platforms to become marketplaces for child predators.

The lawsuit claims that Meta allows and fails to detect the trafficking of children and “enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos”, concluding that “Meta’s conduct is not only unacceptable; it is unlawful”.

Torrez says that he has been shocked by the findings of his team’s investigations into online child sexual exploitation on Meta’s platforms, which included having undercover officers pose as children on Facebook and Instagram.

“There was an explosion of sexual interest from users attracted to the undercover accounts that confirmed the scale and pervasiveness of what turned out to be this unregulated space, where unconnected adults had very quickly expressed the kind of sexual interest that we were concerned about,” he says.

Boy in a tracksuit holding an iPhone, pictured from neck down to waist only. — Documents revealed that Meta estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram are subject to sexual harassment each day. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Internal company documents obtained by the attorney general’s office as part of its investigation have also revealed that the company estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram receive online sexual harassment each day.

Torrez’s lawsuit is yet to enter the “discovery” stage, where both parties will gain access to the information, evidence and witnesses the other side will be presenting at trial.

“Once we get into discovery, we will be getting more documents from the company and conducting depositions, and systematically going through all of the relevant business units and executives to understand who knew what and when,” says Torrez.

He says his work on online child sexual exploitation is “deeply personal” after spending years as a prosecutor working on crimes against children.

“I have profound memories of interacting with child victims. That motivated me to make this a central component of the case we put together.”

The idea of the lawsuit came to him after reading media coverage of Meta’s role in child sexual exploitation, including a Guardian investigation that it was failing to report or detect the use of Facebook and Instagram for child trafficking. If it progresses, the New Mexico lawsuit is expected to take years to conclude.

Meta, like all other social media platforms, has so far avoided accountability for illegal acts committed on their platforms, sheltering behind a clause in the 1996 Communications Decency Act aimed at regulating online pornographic content.

Section 230 of the act states that providers of “interactive computer services” – which includes the owners of social media platforms and website hosts – should not be treated as the publisher of material posted by users.

“A great deal of the issues we’re seeing now and the harm that’s being committed has been facilitated by that act,” Torrez says, while criticising government partisanship for not reforming it. “This is emblematic of some of the polarisation and some of the gridlock we’re seeing at the federal level.”

Torrez wants his lawsuit to provide a medium to usher in new regulations. “Fundamentally, we’re trying to get Meta to change how it does business and prioritise the safety of its users, particularly children.”

A Meta spokesperson says: “Child exploitation is a horrific crime and online predators are determined criminals. We use sophisticated technology, hire child safety experts, report content to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and share information and tools with other companies and law enforcement, including state attorneys general, to help root out predators. In one month alone, we disabled more than half a million accounts for violating our child safety policies.

“We work aggressively to fight child exploitation both on and off our platforms, and to support law enforcement in its efforts to arrest and prosecute the criminals behind it.”

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

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