100,000 children are sexually harrased on Facebook and Instagram every day

According to internal Meta Corporation documents released recently as part of the investigation, approximately 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram are subjected to sexual harassment every day, including receiving “photos of adult genitalia.”

The released court documents also include several charges against the company based on information obtained by the New Mexico Attorney General's Office through communications between Meta employees and staff. The documents describe an incident in 2020 in which the Apple CEO's 12-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted via IG Direct, Instagram's messaging service.

“Things like this upset Apple so much that they threatened to remove us from the App Store,” one concerned Meta employee said, according to the documents. Another senior Meta employee testified before the US Congress late last year, describing how his daughter was sexually harassed on Instagram. His attempts to solve the problem were ignored.

In response to the newly released documents, Meta released a statement saying: “We want teens to have a safe, age-appropriate online experience, and we have more than 30 tools to support them and their parents. We've spent ten years tackling these issues and employing people who have dedicated their careers to helping young people stay safe and supported online.”

Meta's statement also said the company has taken "significant steps to prevent unwanted contacts by teens, especially with adults."

The lawsuit also cites Meta employees' concerns about the safety of children. In July 2020, in an internal meta chat, an employee asked “what exactly are we doing to protect children from sexual abuse?” The employee received a response that what they had done in this matter was "somewhere between zero and negligible."

Earlier, the British Guardian conducted an investigation, the results of which showed that Meta does not report or detect that its platforms are used for child trafficking.