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social media

Jul 13 2026

Meta Retracts Dangerous AI Feature Following Public Backlash

Meta will no longer use public Instagram posts to generate AI images, the social media company announced Friday, following days of public backlash.

The controversial feature launched last Tuesday when Meta rolled out Meta Muse, a new AI program which can create and alter images.

Until Friday, Meta enabled the program, which is embedded into Instagram and WhatsApp, to draw from and alter public Instagram posts — unless users chose to opt out. In other words, when a user asked Meta Muse to create or edit a photo, the program would construct the new images by trawling and taking parts of existing Instagram photos.

Meta customers were none too pleased.

Hayley McNamara, executive director and chief strategy officer of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, wrote in a press release:

This is the opposite of safety by design — it’s vulnerability by design, making it easier to generate AI images of real people while creating obvious and foreseeable opportunities for exploitation, sexual abuse, harassment and identity fraud.

“How was this ever given a green light?” she asked.

McNamara isn’t speaking hypothetically. When xAI embedded Grok Imagine, a generative AI program like Meta Muse, into X earlier this year, disaster followed. The platform flooded with fake images of real people stripped naked or performing simulated sex acts. On at least two occasions, Grok Imagine produced sexual photos of children.

According to recent interviews with two former employees, requests to generate sexual material still make up “well over half” of Grok’s traffic.

AI photo generators don’t just create risk for sexual exploitation. They also notoriously use and alter images protected by copyright.

Actors, public personalities and their representatives were among the most vehement critics of Meta Muse’s ties to Instagram, with the powerful actors union SAG-AFTRA calling the Meta’s decision to make users opt-out of sharing images with the program “an utter miscalculation of public sentiment” regarding AI use.

Meta caved to pressure Friday, stopping Meta Muse from drawing on public Instagram photos.

“Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way,” the company wrote in a statement.

“We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”

While Meta may offer Instagram users a brief reprieve, it likely won’t back off for long.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg intends to make Meta an AI company, The New York Times reports. He spent billions of dollars last year creating the company’s new AI division.

This year, Meta will invest another $145 billion in AI, a massive expenditure which will reportedly include further integrating AI into its platforms.

It’s no surprise, then, that Meta Muse remains available on WhatsApp and Meta AI. Some Instagram filters powered by Meta Muse remain in effect. The program is expected to be embedded into Facebook and Messenger later this year, per the BBC. Meta also plans to introduce a new AI video generator sometime this year.

Zuckerberg’s AI ambitions are concerning given his proven disregard for user safety. The social media mogul topped NCOSE’s 2026 Dirty Dozen List, which highlights 12 mainstream entities that facilitate, enable or profit from the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.

Zuckerberg became the first individual to make the Dirty Dozen List because of his “consistent deprioritization of child safety,” McNamara explained in April, noting examples like:

  • Meta’s AI chatbot, which included design features allowing it to engage in sexual conversations with minors.
  • Meta’s chronically ineffective teen safety tools.
  • A previous Instagram policy requiring an account be flagged for sex trafficking 17 times before it be removed.

This latest scandal is yet another example of Meta and Zuckerberg’s pathological refusal to consider safety first.

“Safety must be built in, not bolted on after public backlash,” McNamara wrote in a Monday press release.

“Meta cannot keep rolling out dangerous products and only pulling them back when public outrage becomes too loud to ignore.”

Additional Articles and Resources

Zuckerberg, Grok, Messaging Platforms Dominate 2026 Dirty Dozen List

X’s ‘Grok’ Generates Pornographic Images of Real People on Demand

Lawsuit Against Snapchat Latest in Social Media Accountability Push

New AI Tool Helps Parents Keep Kids Safe Online

Feds Convict First Person for Crimes Under ‘Take It Down’ Act

Juries in California, New Mexico Rule Against Meta

New Mexico Accuses Meta of Egregious Harm to Children in Court Case

National Center on Sexual Exploitation Targets Law Allowing Tech Companies to Profit from Online Sex Abuse

Zuckerberg Implicated in Meta’s Failures to Protect Children

Instagram Content Restrictions Don’t Work, Tests Show

AI Company Releases Sexually-Explicit Chatbot on App Rated Appropriate for 12 Year Olds

TikTok Dangerous for Minors — Leaked Docs Show Company Refuses to Protect Kids

Proposed ‘App Store Accountability’ Act Would Force Apps and App Stores to Uphold Basic Child Safety Protections

Written by Emily Washburn · Categorized: Culture · Tagged: Meta, social media

Jul 06 2026

Lawsuit Against Snapchat Latest in Social Media Accountability Push

JUMP TO…
  • Dangerous Features
  • Previous Problems
  • Legal Significance
  • What Parents Can Do

A new lawsuit against Snap, Inc., the parent company behind Snapchat, alleges the social media platform’s features enabled a child predator to sexually assault a 12-year-old girl.

The filing references patterns of abuse and negligence around Snapchat which child advocates have been calling out for years.

The Social Media Victims Law Center and Holland Law Firm filed the suit late last month in St. Charles County, Missouri on behalf of 12-year-old JF and her family. It alleges Snapchat enabled 25-year-old Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios to contact, groom and rape JF in September 2021.

The predator pled guilty to one count of statutory rape or attempted statutory rape and one count of enticement or attempted enticement in June. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

“The assault did not happen in a vacuum,” Matthew P. Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, argued in a press release.

“It happened because Snap’s product design made it easy for a predator to reach and manipulate an unsuspecting child.”

Dangerous Features

JF reportedly started using Snapchat at just 11 years old — without her parents’ knowledge or permission. The app’s “Quick Add” algorithm, which recommends new “friends” to users based on mutual “friends,” connected her to Valentin-Rios.

The two had no real-life connections, but JF didn’t know that. Snapchat made it seem like they had all the same “friends.”

In reality, Valentin-Rios allegedly used Snapchat’s “Quick Add” to find and target girls JF’s age. According to the suit, the 25-year-old exchanged thousands of messages with more than a dozen other girls aged 12 to 16, all of whom he found through the “Quick Add” algorithm.

He either sexually propositioned or sexually abused them all.

JF believed Valentin-Rios was a teenager, per the filing. The predator allegedly told his other victims he attended high school. He used Snapchat’s “Bitmoji” feature to create an online avatar supporting his lie.

As far as 12-year-old JF was concerned, Valentin-Rios “looked” like a teenager.

The 25-year-old used Snapchat to groom JF. He sent her nude images and coerced her to send explicit pictures in return. He used these sensitive photos to sextort, or blackmail, her — likely to send increasingly graphic material.

Images sent over Snapchat disappear in 24 hours. When a user screenshots or saves a photo to preserve it, every person on the chat is alerted, a deterrent which further preserves the platform’s culture of secrecy.

These features are virtually synonymous with the platform’s brand. Predators like Valentin-Rios use them to extort child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from their victims. Minors also use Snapchat to exchange self-generated CSAM through sexting.

Snapchat’s Snap Map all allows users to broadcast their location live to their “friends.” Though the app no longer automatically enables location sharing, users like JF can choose to turn on Snap Map.

Valentin-Rios reportedly got JF’s home address from Snap Map. On September 16, 2021, he convinced her to sneak out of her house, then raped her.

Previous Problems

This isn’t the first time Snap, Inc. has been on the hook for failing to protect children.

Snapchat made its fifth appearance on the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s (NCOSE) Dirty Dozen List this year, distinguishing it as one of the 12 biggest mainstream companies facilitating, enabling or profiting from the sexual exploitation and abuse of children in 2026.

It first appeared on the Dirty Dozen List in 2016.

NCOSE’s profile of Snapchat documents example after example of predators using Snapchat to target children and Snap, Inc. failing to protect young users.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Snapchat for offenses related to harming minors in 2024, including:

  • “Permitting predators to identify, contact, groom and extort children and to develop CSAM through these contacts.”
  • “Designing algorithms and features that connect child sex predators to children and allow predators to find target victims.”

Sound familiar?

Snapchat was also one of the original four plaintiffs in KGM v. Meta, the social media addiction lawsuit in which a jury found Meta and YouTube responsible for harming a young woman with their addictive products.

Legal Significance

This case makes two arguments:

  • Snap, Inc. designed Snapchat in such a way that it harms minors.
  • Snap, Inc. knows about the harm it causes minors, but neglects to solve it.

In March, juries in California and New Mexico delivered judgements creating substantial precedent in these areas.

In California, a jury ruled against Meta and YouTube in KGM v. Meta, finding the addictive social media platforms caused KGM to experience sextortion, depression, anxiety and body image issues. A higher court rejected Meta’s appeal of the ruling on June 11.

Recall that, prior to this ruling, social media companies wiggled out of almost any lawsuit by claiming the harm victims experience from social media has nothing to do with the way the platforms are designed, but the kinds of content victims ingest.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Acts says social media companies cannot be held liable for the content people post of their sites.

In New Mexico, a jury ruled against Meta in New Mexico v. Meta, holding the social media giant responsible for endangering children and “misleading consumers” about the safety of its platforms.

The ruling was based on evidence uncovered in an undercover operation showing Meta’s platforms:

  • Show underage users sexually explicit content without prompting.
  • Allow adult predators to contact children and sexually exploit them.
  • Facilitate the spread and exchange of child pornography.

The ruling in KGM suggests juries can understand and sympathize with legal arguments connecting a social media platform’s design choices to user harm.

The ruling in New Mexico suggest juries are willing to punish social media companies, not just for acting poorly, but for failing to act when they knew abuse was occurring.

Based on what we know thus far, JF’s lawyers intend to prove Snap, Inc. engaged in both kinds of bad behavior. If JF wins, the company could be forced to pay compensatory and punitive damages. A judge could also order its to change the parts of its platform which cause harm.

What Parents Can Do

JF’s case illustrates how hard it is to police platforms like Snapchat.

The 11-year-old unwittingly exposed herself to great danger, culminating in a devastating physical violation. Her parents didn’t even know she had downloaded the app.

Even supposing parents figure out Snapchat’s weak parental controls, JF’s lawsuit contends the app is designed to encourage illicit activity.

Snapchat is not a platform you want your child to join.

Additional Articles and Resources

New AI Tool Helps Parents Keep Kids Safe Online

Feds Convict First Person for Crimes Under ‘Take It Down’ Act

Zuckerberg, Grok, Messaging Platforms Dominate 2026 Dirty Dozen List

Juries in California, New Mexico Rule Against Meta

New Mexico Accuses Meta of Egregious Harm to Children in Court Case

National Center on Sexual Exploitation Targets Law Allowing Tech Companies to Profit from Online Sex Abuse

Zuckerberg Implicated in Meta’s Failures to Protect Children

Instagram Content Restrictions Don’t Work, Tests Show

X’s ‘Grok’ Generates Pornographic Images of Real People on Demand

AI Company Releases Sexually-Explicit Chatbot on App Rated Appropriate for 12 Year Olds

TikTok Dangerous for Minors — Leaked Docs Show Company Refuses to Protect Kids

Proposed ‘App Store Accountability’ Act Would Force Apps and App Stores to Uphold Basic Child Safety Protections

Written by Emily Washburn · Categorized: Culture · Tagged: snapchat, social media

Apr 08 2026

Feds Convict First Person for Crimes Under ‘Take It Down’ Act

Federal prosecutors secured their first conviction under the Take It Down Act yesterday after an Ohio man pled guilty to crimes including distributing sexually explicit AI deepfakes of women and children.

“We will not tolerate the abhorrent practice of posting and publicizing AI-generated intimate images of real individuals without consent,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Dominick S. Gerace II wrote in a press release following James Strahler II’s guilty plea.

“We are committed to using every tool at our disposal to hold accountable offenders like Strahler, who seek to intimidate and harass others by creating and circulating this disturbing content.”

According to the U.S. attorney’s office, Strahler used AI to terrorize six women and their families between December 2024 and June 2025, when he was arrested. His “campaign of harassment” included sharing sexually explicit photos and videos of his victims — both real and AI-generated — and threatening to sexually assault them.

Strahler also threatened his victims’ mothers. The attorney’s office writes:

[Strahler] messaged the mothers of the adult female [victims] and demanded nude photos of them, threatening to circulate explicit or obscene images he created of their daughters if they did not comply.

The Take It Down Act, which both President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump signed into law in May 2025, criminalizes the three behaviors Strahler used to harm his victims:

  • Sharing private, sexually explicit images and videos without permission.
  • Sharing sexually explicit digital forgeries, or deepfakes, of real people.
  • Sextortion, or threatening to share sexually explicit images and videos.

The Take It Down Act punishes sharing real and AI-generated explicit content with the same penalties, because the consequences of distributing sexually explicit images and videos of a real person don’t diminish when the content is fake.

Strahler faces up to two years in prison for each time he shared intimate content of his victims, and up to 18 months for each time he threatened to do so.

Strahler’s crimes aren’t limited to adults. He also used AI technology to create sexually explicit deepfake photos and videos of children, hundreds of which he posted to a website dedicated to distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Investigators found hundreds more images and videos containing “morphed CSAM” on his phone.

The Take It Down Act levies harsher penalties against offenders who exploit and sextort children. Strahler can face up to three years in prison for each piece of CSAM he distributed.

“Today marks the first conviction under the Take It Down Act — protecting victims from non-consensual AI-generated sexually explicit images, cyberstalking and threats of violence,” First Lady Melania Trump, who helped shepherd the bill through Congress, posted to X.

“Thank you U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II for protecting Americans from cybercrimes in this new digital age.”

TAKE IT DOWN ACT: FIRST CONVICTION

Today marks the first conviction under the Take It Down Act – protecting victims from non-consensual AI-generated sexually explicit images, cyberstalking, and threats of violence.

Thank you U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II for protecting…

— First Lady Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) April 7, 2026

The Daily Citizen thanks federal prosecutors in Ohio for putting the Take It Down Act to work in service of kids and victims of AI-based sexual abuse. This case creates a blueprint for other districts to begin leveraging powerful legislation against predators.

But the Take It Down Act can’t succeed in isolation, either. Incidents of AI-driven sextortion and leaked deepfakes, in particular, will continue growing beyond law enforcement’s capacity until America regulates how AI companies create and safety test their chatbots.

We live in the digital wild west. Enforcing Take It Down Act is just one step toward civilization.

Additional Articles and Resources:

Zuckerberg, Grok, Messaging Platforms Dominate 2026 Dirty Dozen List

X’s ‘Grok’ Generates Pornographic Images of Real People on Demand

AI Company Releases Sexually-Explicit Chatbot on App Rated Appropriate for 12 Year Olds

First Lady Melania Trump Celebrates House’s Passage of Take it Down Act

First Lady Melania Trump Celebrates Committee passage of Bill Targeting Revenge Porn, Sextortion and Explicit Deepfakes

First Lady Supports Bill Targeting Deepfakes, Sextortion and Revenge Porn

Teen Boys Falling Prey to Financial Sextortion — Here’s What Parents Can Do

Meta Takes Steps to Prevent Kids From Sexting

Instagram’s Sextortion Safety Measures — Too Little, Too Late?

‘The Dirty Dozen List’ — Corporations Enable and Profit from Sexual Exploitation

Taylor Swift Deepfakes Should Inspire Outrage — But X Isn’t to Blame

Written by Emily Washburn · Categorized: Culture · Tagged: AI, deepfakes, social media, Take It Down Act

Mar 25 2026

Juries in California, New Mexico Rule Against Meta

Juries in California and New Mexico dealt Meta two costly legal defeats this week, reflecting Americans’ mounting frustration with social media companies’ unwillingness to protect children on their platforms.  

KGM v. Meta

A Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube’s addictive social media platforms caused a young woman to experience sextortion, depression, anxiety and body image issues in KGM v. Meta today.

Until now, companies like Meta have blamed harms associated with social media on harmful content, rather than the design of social media platforms themselves. Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, social media companies cannot be held liable for the content people post on their sites.

As of today, they can be held liable for designing addictive products.

“Today’s landmark verdict isn’t just a financial win for the plaintiff,” says President and CEO of Focus on the Family Jim Daly. “It’s an acknowledgment that Big Tech cannot willfully, recklessly and irresponsibly poison young hearts and minds in order to generate a profit.”

Meta and YouTube must pay the plaintiff and her family $2.1 and $0.9 million in damages, respectively, with additional punitive fines to follow.

A spokesperson for YouTube says it plans to appeal the ruling. A spokesperson for Meta says the company is reviewing its legal options.

New Mexico v. Meta

Yesterday, a New Mexico jury found Meta violated state consumer protection laws by endangering children and “misleading consumers” about the safety of its platforms.

The jury required Meta to pay $5,000 — the maximum penalty possible — for every violation of the law, totaling $375 million.

“New Mexico is proud to be the first state to hold Meta accountable in court for misleading parents, enabling child exploitation and harming kids,” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez wrote in a press release.

“Today, the jury joined families, educators and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”

A spokesperson for Meta told Fox Business it plans to appeal the ruling.

New Mexico v. Meta, which New Mexico filed against Meta in 2023, featured evidence from an undercover operation in which law enforcement agents posed as children on Instagram and Facebook.

The investigation indicated Meta’s platforms:

  • Show underage users sexually explicit content without prompting.
  • Allow adult predators to contact children and sexually exploit them.
  • Facilitate the spread and exchange of child pornography.
What’s Next?

Though juries have delivered verdicts in both cases, proceedings in neither case are over.

In KGM v. Meta, the jury must deliberate over how much Meta and YouTube should pay in punitive damages. While compensatory damages are assigned to compensate an injured party, punitive damages are levied to punish offenders and deter further poor conduct.

The companies face punitive damages because the jury determined their actions meet the legal standard for “malice,” which includes highly egregious conduct.

In New Mexico v. Meta, the judge must rule on the state’s remaining claim: that the design and operation of Meta’s platforms are a public nuisance which must be remedied.

If Judge Bryan Biedscheid rules in the state’s favor, he could force Meta to make changes to its platforms, including “enacting effective age verification, removing predators … and protecting minors from encrypted communications that shield bad actors.”

Looking Ahead

The precedent set in KGM and New Mexico could dramatically increase future plaintiffs’ likelihood of bringing successful cases against neglectful social media companies.

KGM is the first of nine bellwether cases representing a group of more than 1,600 similar social media addiction cases filed in California state court. The jury’s decision today proves social media addiction cases can win in front of a jury.

New Mexico won its case against Meta in state court. Several other states hope to triumph against social media companies in federal court this summer.

The dozens of plaintiffs in this group of cases — primarily states and school districts — allege they pay the cost for citizens’ social media addiction. KGM helps establish exactly what the social and practical costs of social media addiction can include.

The Daily Citizen is grateful for the juries’ careful deliberation in these cases and their choice to hold companies accountable for their abusive business decisions.

The Daily Citizen will continue covering the social media addiction cases and America’s ongoing reckoning with social media.

Additional Articles and Resources

New Mexico Accuses Meta of Egregious Harm to Children in Court Case

Social Media Addiction Suits got to Trial — Here’s What You Need to Know

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg Denies Instagram is Addictive in Social Media Trial Testimony

Australia Bans Kids Under 16 Years Old From Social Media

National Center on Sexual Exploitation Targets Law Allowing Tech Companies to Profit from Online Sex Abuse

Instagram’s Sextortion Safety Measures — Too Little, Too Late?

Key Takeaways From Zuckerberg’s Tell-All

Zuckerberg Implicated in Meta’s Failures to Protect Children

Instagram Content Restrictions Don’t Work, Tests Show

Surgeon General Recommends Warning on Social Media Platforms

Horrifying Instagram Investigation Indicts Modern Parenting

Written by Emily Washburn · Categorized: Culture · Tagged: social media

Mar 06 2026

New Mexico Accuses Meta of Egregious Harm to Children in Court Case

Trial proceedings in New Mexico’s court case against Meta will conclude later this month, with a judge to decide whether the beleaguered social media company violated state law by exposing minors to explicit content, social media addiction and sexual exploitation.

The state’s 228-page complaint, which New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez filed in 2023, alleges Meta’s platforms target minors with addictive features and “knowingly expose them to the twin dangers of sexual exploitation and mental health harm.”

If First Judicial District Court Judge Bryan Biedscheid rules in New Mexico’s favor, Meta could face hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for violating state law protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive business practices.

The trial is expected to conclude on March 27.

New Mexico’s case is the first stand-alone state suit against Meta. It includes evidence from a months-long undercover operation in which New Mexico officers posed as children on Facebook and Instagram.

The investigation indicated Meta’s platforms:

  • Show underage users sexually explicit content without prompting.
  • Allow adult predators to contact children and sexually exploit them.
  • Facilitate the spread and exchange of child pornography.

In some cases, the state claims, Facebook recommended children join groups “devoted to facilitating commercial sex.”

In another case, investigators say Meta “allowed a fictitious mother offer her 13-year-old daughter for sale to sex traffickers and to create a professional page to allow her daughter to share revenue from advertising.”

“Our investigation into Meta’s social media platforms demonstrates that they are not safe spaces for children but rather prime locations for predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex,” Attorney General Torrez summarized in a press release.

Internal documents from Meta and testimony from former employees bolster New Mexico’s claims. Shortly before the trial began on February 9, the state published several troubling communications from a former Meta employee who worked in child safety.

In a June 2020 email reviewed by the New York Post, the employee revealed sexual predators on Meta platforms target “[approximately] 500k victims per day in English markets only.”

“We expect the true situation is worse,” she confided.

In another email, the employee considered the impact of giving such a large user base access to children.

“I just think nowhere in the history of humanity could you have a secret conversation with 1,000 people,” she wrote. “I’m actually scared of the ramifications here.”

Two-time Meta employee Arturo Béjar testified against his former employer on February 12. Béjar left Meta for the first time in 2015. He returned in 2019 to strengthen Meta platforms’ safety after someone sent his own daughter explicit photos online.

As far as Béjar could tell, Meta wasn’t interested in prioritizing safety.

“So many examples of people with good ideas for good things that would reduce harm within, as it got reviewed and went through the pipeline, would get pushed down,” KOAT quoted Béjar’s testimony.

In 2021, Béjar surveyed more than 237,000 Instagram users between 13 and 15 years old to determine what kinds of harm they faced on social media. One in three reported witnessing cyberbullying. One in 10 said they, themselves, experienced bullying online. One in five reported seeing explicit images.

Though Béjar said he shared his findings with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other top executives, he claimed the company continued to prioritize profit.

“I think they [the executives] really care about making people think that they care, but I think in practice they don’t care,” Béjar mused, per KOAT.

“Caring is the moment you become aware of something, you engage with it, you understand it, you work on it, you do things that make it better.”

Meta, for its part, maintains New Mexico’s undercover investigation was “ethically compromised.” In opening arguments, the company claimed the state “cherry-picked” evidence which doesn’t accurately reflect its safety protocols.

Judge Biedscheid denied Meta’s request to dismiss New Mexico’s case in May 2024. He subsequently denied its pretrial motion to exclude evidence from the state’s undercover investigation.

Meta’s biggest problem is that New Mexico’s allegations echo those from thousands of other lawsuits against the social media company. More than 1,600 civil cases accusing Meta and other social media platforms of harming children — known as the social media addiction lawsuits — are awaiting trial in California state court.

Trial for the first of these cases began in Los Angeles in January.

Dozens more federal cases, including many brought against Meta by state governments, will make their way into courtrooms starting this summer.

Instagram, in particular, has long been linked to sextortion and inappropriate content. Predators met their victims on Instagram in nearly half (45%) of all the sextortion reports filed with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children between August 2020 and August 2023.

Of the scammers who threated to share explicit photos of minors, 60% threatened to do so on Instagram.

In January 2024, Meta announced all teen accounts would begin automatically filtering out inappropriate content. Journalists from The Wall Street Journal soon discovered the feature didn’t work.

“Instagram regularly recommends sexual videos to accounts for teenagers that appear interested in racy content, and does so within minutes of when they first log in,” the outlet wrote, continuing:

Within a half-hour of its creation, a new 13-year-old test account that watched only Instagram-recommended videos featuring women began being served video after video about anal sex.

Regardless of whether New Mexico triumphs against Meta in court, evidence from the state’s case clearly illustrates why minors should not be allowed on Instagram and Facebook unsupervised.

The Daily Citizen will continue covering America’s legal reckoning with social media and the harm it causes children.

Additional Articles and Resources

Social Media Addiction Suits got to Trial — Here’s What You Need to Know

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg Denies Instagram is Addictive in Social Media Trial Testimony

Australia Bans Kids Under 16 Years Old From Social Media

National Center on Sexual Exploitation Targets Law Allowing Tech Companies to Profit from Online Sex Abuse

Instagram’s Sextortion Safety Measures — Too Little, Too Late?

Key Takeaways From Zuckerberg’s Tell-All

Zuckerberg Implicated in Meta’s Failures to Protect Children

Instagram Content Restrictions Don’t Work, Tests Show

Surgeon General Recommends Warning on Social Media Platforms

Horrifying Instagram Investigation Indicts Modern Parenting

Written by Emily Washburn · Categorized: Culture · Tagged: social media

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