Investigation into child exploitation on Meta platforms leads to arrests of three men

An investigation by the New Mexico Attorney General into the potential dangers of Meta’s platforms has resulted in the arrests of three men charged with attempted sexual abuse of children.

An investigation by the New Mexico Attorney General into the potential dangers of Meta’s platforms has resulted in the arrests of three men charged with attempted sexual abuse of children. The arrests came after a months-long investigation by the attorney general’s office into the risks of sexual exploitation of children on Facebook and Instagram. That investigation also formed the basis of a lawsuit against Meta, filed in December, accusing the tech giant of creating a “breeding ground” for child predators. Meta has pushed back against the claims in the lawsuit and says it offers dozens of safety tools for children and parents. As part of the investigation, the attorney general’s office created multiple fake Facebook and Instagram profiles posing as children, which the suit alleges were served sexually suggestive content and, in some cases, were urged by other users to send pornographic content of themselves. The fake child accounts were also allegedly contacted and solicited for sex by the three New Mexico adult men whose arrests were announced by the attorney general on Wednesday. Two of the three men were arrested at a motel, where they allegedly believed they would be meeting up with a 12-year-old girl, based on their conversations with the decoy accounts. “This is (Meta CEO) Mark Zuckerberg’s fault,” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a press conference announcing the arrests Wednesday. “This is the fault of a company that has extraordinary resources at its disposal and has chosen time and again to place profits over the interests of children.”