Exclusive | Meta researcher warned execs that 500K kids per DAY were targeted by creeps on Instagram, Facebook: bombshell docs

A top Meta researcher warned the company’s executives that there could be as many as 500,000 cases of online sexual exploitation per day on Facebook and Instagram, according to explosive documents that were unsealed on the eve of a landmark jury trial.Opening arguments begin Monday in New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez’s case in state court, which accuses Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant of exposing kids to the “twin dangers of sexual exploitation and mental health harm” through creepy messages, “sextortion” schemes and human trafficking.The result, the state claims, is a teen social media crisis that has led to anxiety, depression, self-harm and increasing suicides.Ahead of the trial, the state’s lawyers cited an internal email in which Malia Andrus, who held child safety-related roles at Meta from August 2017 to October 2024, wrote that creeps targeted “~500k victims per DAY in English markets only” with sexually inappropriate messages.“We expect the true situation is worse,” Andrus said in a June 2020 email, according to court records.In another chilling message, Andrus noted that the massive user bases of Facebook and Instagram have effectively handed predators a tool to target kids on a scale that was previously unimaginable.“I just think, nowhere in the history of humanity could you have a secret conversation with 1000 people,” she wrote.

“I’m actually scared of the ramifications here.”New Mexico’s lawsuit is one of several legal battles Meta faces this year — and will seek to shine a light on safety lapses that have caught the attention of US lawmakers on Capitol Hill.Last week, a bellwether trial accusing Meta and Google-owned YouTube of fueling social media addiction in young users began in California, with hundreds of victims’ families and school districts as plaintiffs.Elsewhere, the FTC last month appealed its loss in the major antitrust lawsuit seeking a breakup of Meta.The multiple trials accusing Meta...