New Mexico vs Facebook - Pizzagate

New Mexico vs. Facebook – Pizza

In a chilling revelation, New Mexico authorities have uncovered a series of communications among sex predators operating within the state, utilizing the seemingly innocuous term “PIZZA” as a code word to obscure their illicit activities.

The Gateway Pundit reported that the New Mexico Democrat Attorney General Raúl Torrez took decisive action against tech giant Meta Platforms, Inc., its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and associated entities, including Instagram, LLC, and Facebook Holdings, LLC.

Read the New Mexico Court Filing

Below is the Court’s Filing Documents introduction:

I. INTRODUCTION

  1. Meta and its CEO tell the public that Meta’s social media platforms are safe and
    good for kids. The reality is far different. Meta knowingly exposes children to the twin dangers of
    sexual exploitation and mental health harm. Meta’s conduct has turned New Mexico children who
    are on its platforms into victims. Meta’s motive for doing so is profit. This action seeks to make
    social media safer for New Mexico’s children by holding Meta accountable for conduct that
    violates the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act and creates a public nuisance.
  2. Meta’s platforms Facebook and Instagram are a breeding ground for predators who
    target children for human trafficking, the distribution of sexual images, grooming, and solicitation.
    Teens and preteens can easily register for unrestricted accounts because of a lack of age
    verification. When they do, Meta directs harmful and inappropriate material at them. It allows
    unconnected adults to have unfettered access to them, which those adults use for grooming and
    solicitation. And Meta’s platforms do this even though Meta has the capability of both determining
    that these users are minors and providing warnings or other protections against material that is not
    only harmful to minors but poses substantial dangers of solicitation and trafficking. For years,
    Meta has been on notice from both external and internal sources of the sexual exploitation dangers
    its platforms present for children but has nonetheless failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual
    material and sexual propositions delivered to children. In short, Meta has allowed Facebook and
    Instagram to become a marketplace for predators in search of children upon whom to prey. Meta’s
    conduct is not only unacceptable; it is unlawful. This action seeks to force Meta to institute
    protections for children because it refuses to do so voluntarily.
  3. Simultaneously with its knowing failure to curb the sexual exploitation of children
    on its platforms, Meta targeted the age-based vulnerabilities of children by adopting algorithms
    and platform designs that are addictive to young users. Meta knowingly sought to maximize teen
    engagement on its platforms. It chose to implement features such as engagement-based feeds,
    infinite scroll, push notifications, ephemeral content, and auto play video designed to increase the
    amount of time young users spend on its platforms while inhibiting the ability of those users to
    self-regulate. Meta’s platforms are the social media equivalent of an addictive drug from which
    young users cannot break free. Meta knew that these design features fostered addiction, anxiety,
    depression, self-harm, and suicide among teens and preteens. But Meta and its CEO rejected
    repeated internal proposals, and external pressures, to implement protections against youth mental
    health harm. Further, Meta selected a metric by which it measures conduct violative of its
    Community Standards policies that it knows to grossly underreport harmful material on its
    platforms, and Meta uses this metric to make misrepresentations about the safety of its platforms
    for young users.
  4. Meta profits from its exposure of young users to harmful material and its refusal to
    implement design features that would protect children from sexual exploitation and mental health
    harm. It does so not by charging children for accessing its platforms but instead by monetizing, in
    the form of targeted advertising, the data that Meta gathers about its young users and their usage.
    Meta’s “targeted” advertising program allows advertisers to direct advertisements to consumers
    more precisely than would otherwise be possible using traditional media. This arrangement has
    proved particularly lucrative for Meta. The company reported more than $116 billion in revenue
    in 2022, and $117 billion the year before. As Meta’s financials confirm, all or substantially all of
    this revenue is attributable to advertising and enhanced by its user-data-driven ability to target
    advertising.
  5. Meta’s platforms must maintain massive user bases in order to generate its target
    revenue. Meta must not only attract new users year over year, but it must ensure that existing users
    remain on its platforms. If users leave Facebook or Instagram, if new users refuse to join altogether,
    or if these users spend less time on its platforms, Meta’s revenues will suffer as it would have less
    private data, and fewer users, to sell. As Meta warns investors in its annual SEC filings, “If we fail
    to retain existing users or add new users, or if our users decrease their level of engagement with
    our products, our revenue, financial results, and business may be significantly harmed.”
  6. Meta’s business model of profit over child safety and business practices of
    misrepresenting the amount of dangerous material and conduct to which its platforms expose
    children violates New Mexico law. Meta should be held accountable for the harms it has inflicted
    on New Mexico’s children and be required to make its platforms as safe for children as the law
    requires.

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