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FOX Business Correspondent Madison Alworth explores the FBI’s allegations against social media companies and Metas’ defense on The Big Money Show.
A researcher at Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagramexecutives at the tech giant warned there could be more than 500,000 cases of child sexual exploitation per day on social media platforms.
Meta will be in court Monday when opening arguments begin in a case brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez against the social media company, which he has accused of exposing children to “sexual exploitation and mental health harm” through interactions on the platform.
In a court filing obtained by FOX Business, attorneys for the state of New Mexico noted that Malia Andrus, who worked at child safety roles at Meta from 2017 to 2024, said in an internal email included in court documents that sexually inappropriate messages were being sent to “~500,000 victims DAY in the English markets alone.”
“We expect the actual situation to be worse,” Andrus added in a June 2020 email included in court records. The emails were first reported by him New York Post.
Signage outside the Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California, USA, on Thursday, April 20, 2023. Meta Platforms Inc. will begin cutting jobs at the company as it restructures teams and works to achieve founder Mark Zuckerberg’s goal of greater efficiency. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Andrus said the sheer number of users on the Facebook and Instagram platforms give predators the ability to target children to an extent that was not possible before the advent of social media.
“I just don’t think anywhere in human history could you have a secret conversation with 1000 people,” Andrus wrote. “I’m actually afraid of the ramifications here.”
He also noted problems with age verification on the platform, writing in an email that it’s a “chicken-and-egg problem: our detection and proactive metrics use age determination, so if the age prediction is wrong, we don’t find them. However, our researchers have given feedback that almost every time they encounter an age liar on IG (in a child safety context) the age prediction is wrong.”
A computer screen shows the Meta logo while a cellphone in the foreground shows Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg in Ankara, Turkey on October 28, 2025. (Arda Kucukkaya/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The number discussed in this 2020 email exchange does not refer to individual victims or incidents of child exploitation,” a Meta spokesperson told FOX Business. “The measurement technology we used at the time used an overly broad and conservative set of criteria and as a result counted many benign interactions. This number was significantly reduced after we refined and improved our measurement technology.”
The Meta spokesperson added: “Since 2020, we’ve introduced a number of new measures to help reduce potential inappropriate interactions with children, including preventing adults from starting private chats with teens they’re not connected to and using enhanced behavioral cues to identify potentially suspicious actors and prevent them from finding and tracking teens.”
The New Mexico case is just one of those facing Meta, which is also facing a case California State Court that begins Monday about whether Instagram harmed a woman’s mental health, fueling her depression and suicidal health.
CEO goal Mark Zuckerberg He is expected to testify during the California trial, which the judge aims to conclude by the end of March.
META LAWSUIT AFTER TEEN SUICIDE, FAMILIES CLAIM TECH GIANT TO IGNORE ‘SEXTORTION’ SCHEMES
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may testify in the California trial. (Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The case was also filed against Google the alphabetwhich is the parent company of YouTube.
Google spokesman José Castañeda told FOX Business that the allegations against YouTube are “simply not true.”
“Providing young people with a safer and healthier experience has always been central to our work,” he said.
Other social media platforms, including TikTok and Snap, were originally part of the lawsuit, though they settled with the plaintiff before trial.
Lawyers for the woman who brought the suit, a 20-year-old identified as KGM, aim to show that the social media companies were negligent in designing the apps and failed to warn the public about the risk. The jury may consider an award of damages for pain and suffering and may also award punitive damages.
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The companies plan to point to other factors in the young woman’s life as the cause of her mental health issues, while outlining their work to protect young people on the platform and distancing themselves from users who upload harmful content.
Reuters contributed to this report.
