Court documents underscore Meta’s ‘historical reluctance’ to protect children on Instagram

By BARBARA ORTUTAY
AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Newly unredacted documents from New Mexico’s lawsuit against Meta underscore the company’s historical reluctance to keep children safe on its platforms. That’s according to a complaint filed New Mexico’s attorney general. who sued Facebook and Instagram owner Meta in December. The lawsuit says the company failed to protect young users from exposure to child sexual abuse material and let adults solicit explicit imagery from them. In the freshly unredacted passages, internal employee messages and presentations from 2020 and 2021 show Meta was aware of issues such as adult strangers being able to contact children on Instagram, the sexualization of minors on that platform and the dangers of its “people you may know” feature that recommends connections between adults and children.