The Sting That Exposed How Meta Endangers Kids

Summary

Episode Summary:

Podcast: Question Everything
Host: Brian Reed
Episode: The Sting That Exposed How Meta Endangers Kids
Date: July 9, 2026

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Overview

This episode explores a landmark lawsuit against Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) by New Mexico’s Attorney General, Raul Torres. The episode delves into how a creative sting operation by state investigators exposed systemic child endangerment on Meta platforms, ultimately leading to a groundbreaking court victory against the tech giant. The investigation and trial unearth chilling realities of online child exploitation, Meta’s alleged inaction, and the wider implications for tech accountability and child safety in the digital age.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Context and Stakes of the Lawsuit

• NM Attorney General Raul Torres led the case, alleging Meta’s platform designs actively enabled sexual predators to target children at scale, holding the company responsible under state law ([00:48]).
• Previous attempts to sue tech companies were blocked by Section 230—a federal law protecting platforms from liability for user actions.
• For the first time, a judge allowed this case to reach a jury, sidestepping Section 230 as a shield.

Raul Torres [01:15]:
“I said very clearly, very early on, look, this company had better be very concerned if we actually get to stand in front of a jury … If they get a chance to hear everything, they're gonna do the right thing.”

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2. The Mechanics of the Investigative Sting

• The Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) unit in New Mexico devised undercover profiles using officer selfies altered by AI to appear as children ([08:25]).
• Strict protocols ensure no enticement: “no sexualized images, nothing revealing—just a hoodie and jeans” ([09:17]).
• Investigators immediately received disturbing levels of attention from adult men, highlighting the ease with which predators act online.

Jonathan Talley, Head of ICAC [10:34]:
“It’s memorable just because it’s amazing how quickly some of these predators and bad actors reach out to what they believe are minor children. It’s absolutely eye opening.”

• The undercover persona at the trial’s center was “Issa B,” a 13-year-old girl, whose profile garnered hundreds of friend requests a day, quickly maxing out Facebook’s 5,000-friend limit and accumulating 7,000 followers—mostly adult men ([14:05]).

Ricky Kitsch, Investigator [14:09]:
“Within a month's period of time had maxed the maximum amount allowable of friends on Facebook. She had reached 5,000 friends and … approximately 7,000 followers.”

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3. The Sting’s Chilling Results and Meta’s Response

• The Issa B profile rapidly attracted not just friend requests but regular explicit comments, adult men declaring affection, invitations to predator chat groups, and offers from men seeking to “spoil” her ([15:25]).
• Despite reporting a user who sent child pornography, Facebook’s response was that nothing violated its standards. Instead, the platform recommended explicit videos to Issa B and sent suggestions on how to grow her following and monetize ([16:32]).

Raul Torres [16:50]:
"Not only is there no red flag, it is: How do you amplify? How can we help you amplify what this is?"

• The investigators’ inability to get Meta to act on these clear signals forms a core grievance in the lawsuit.
• When Meta discovered the fake account was operated by police, it shut it down, cutting off hundreds of leads in ongoing investigations ([26:49]).

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4. Impactful Quotes and Structural Critique

• The Attorney General saw Meta’s conduct as willfully negligent:

Torres [20:22]:
“I take it personally because most of my life and my professional work has been trying to help victims … [Meta’s] harming vulnerable people, and they knowingly are doing it.”

• The AG’s team argued Meta created a “marketplace for predators”; their complaint used product liability law to try to hold the company accountable for dangerous design, not user speech ([21:13]).
• Internal Meta documents revealed:
  • Their own algorithms funneled minor accounts to suspected groomers at a rate four times higher than for ordinary adults ([22:48]).
  • By Meta’s 2019 estimates, half a million children a day encountered sexual content, harassment, or grooming ([23:05]).
• Meta’s move to end-to-end encryption, despite internal concerns, was estimated to shield 7.5 million incidents of child abuse material yearly from detection ([23:09]).

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5. Trial, Verdict, and Meta’s Defense

• Meta’s Legal Defense: Claimed the investigators’ experience was unrepresentative, arguing real teenagers don’t behave like these sting accounts ([29:30]).

• Courtroom Cross-Examination:

  • Ricky Kitsch maintained:

    [30:02] “I would say teens know and are involved in a lot more than you think they are.”

• A second sting, “Daisy Roanhorse,” led to the arrest of three men attempting to meet a supposed 13-year-old; two had already been flagged by Meta as threats, yet their accounts remained live ([32:40]).

Torres on press conference [34:04]:
“The danger presented by Meta and its social media platforms doesn’t just exist in the virtual world, it actually endangers children in the real world.”

• Naming Zuckerberg:
  • The Attorney General sued Mark Zuckerberg personally, tying risky decisions—such as ignoring child presence or amplifying privacy over safety—directly to him ([34:18]).
  • In deposition, Zuckerberg admitted knowledge since 2007 that underage children were on the platform by lying about their age ([35:49]).

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6. Zuckerberg’s Deposition and Platform Oversight

• Zuckerberg repeatedly downplayed responsibility, evoking analogies between Meta and a city:

  Zuckerberg [39:30]:
  “I don’t think people would expect that, like, every crime in a city is going to be stopped or prevented.”

• Torres likened Meta to “a big digital playground” with no supervision, emphasizing the design choices that entice and keep children exposed ([28:38], [38:49]).

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7. The Fallout and Precedent

• In Feb 2026, New Mexico won a $375 million judgment, with another trial pending for further remedies—suggested changes include age verification, limits on adult-minor contact, and a state-appointed monitor ([40:18]).

• Meta threatened to pull its platforms from New Mexico, a move Torres called a financial bluff:

  Torres [43:47]: “They’re making this threat because this is a small state and it’s better financially for them to go dark in New Mexico. … If they can build [safer products] here… there will be enormous pressure… to turn on the New Mexico solution globally.”

• Torres argues repealing Section 230 would have spurred reform long ago ([45:23]).

Torres [45:23]:
“Had they been on the hook from the beginning, how many kids would we have saved? … Mark Zuckerberg, he’s not on your side. He’s gathering every bit of data … to do one thing and one thing only. … It’s to sell you stuff.”

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Notable Quotes

• “[Issa B’s] growth was so rapid in terms of followers and friend requests and things like that. There’s a flood of inbound friend requests, mostly from men, unknown men.” – Raul Torres [15:05]
• “Half a million kids a day were being subjected to sexually explicit material, sexual harassment, grooming, or exploitation.” – Raul Torres [23:05]
• “We put all the kids in the same big digital playground, with no supervision.” – Torres [03:58 and 38:49]
• “This is Mark Zuckerberg’s fault.” – Raul Torres [34:18]
• “If we get the judge to order them … and they build a safer product in New Mexico… There will be enormous pressure for them to turn on the New Mexico solution globally.” – Torres [43:47]
• “Just because New Mexico is a small place, which means it's a place that Meta feels like they can intimidate or bully… doesn't mean I'm going to accept as a price of their continued presence here a certain amount of kids being targeted, exploited, or ending up killing themselves because their product continues to be dangerous.” – Torres [42:56]

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-------------|---------------------------------------------------------| | 00:48 | Lawsuit and Section 230 explained | | 08:25 | Investigators’ undercover methods using AI | | 14:00 | Issa B profile inundated; scale of unwanted attention | | 16:32 | Meta’s response to reports—recommendations to “amplify” | | 20:19 | AG Torres explains personal drive & systemic issues | | 22:48 | Alarming stats: children funneled to predators | | 23:09 | End-to-end encryption decision and internal criticism | | 26:49 | Meta responds by shutting down police sting accounts | | 32:40 | Follow-up sting: Daisy Roanhorse & repeat offenders | | 34:04 | AG’s public statements; blaming Zuckerberg | | 35:39 | Zuckerberg deposition: awareness of underage users | | 39:30 | Zuckerberg’s “city” analogy for platform responsibility | | 40:18 | Details on proposed remedies & Meta’s reaction | | 43:45 | Torres challenges Meta’s threat to pull from NM | | 45:23 | Torres on Section 230 and long-term consequences |

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Tone and Final Thoughts

The episode maintains a sober, investigative mood, mixing meticulous legal and technological detail with the personal stakes of those battling online child exploitation. The language is at times stark and confrontational—especially from AG Torres, who expresses a visceral sense of outrage at Meta’s choices and a commitment to structural reform. The reporting highlights both the specificity and scale of the abuse, the astonishing ease with which predators reach out to children, and the alleged institutional indifference of one of the world’s largest companies.

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For the Listener

Whether you’re a parent, policymaker, journalist, or someone concerned about tech accountability, this episode delivers a rare inside look at how digital platforms become hunting grounds for predators, the legal battle to make them safer, and why the outcome could reverberate beyond New Mexico—potentially forcing global change at the world’s most influential tech companies.

Transcript

[A]

On the broadside, we take you into the heart of the south with stories that'll surprise you. Bigfoot apparently loves glow sticks. He likes to party. Exactly, exactly.

[B]

He's a raver.

[A]

And topics that dig into the muddy margins of history. Right. The good, the bad, the ugly.

[B]

It's not clean at all. It's so messy.

[C]

Wait a second. This is actually real.

[A]

Listen to the broadside. One story every week exploring the rich traditions of the South.

[D]

Right now, the Attorney General of New Mexico, Raul Torres, is in the middle of probably the biggest legal fight of his career against one of the biggest companies in the world. In February, he took Meta to court.

[C]

This is gonna. This is gonna sound bad, but I didn't have any uncertainty, really, about the jury.

[D]

Torres alleged that Meta designed its platforms, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, in a way that has enabled sexual predators to target children on a massive scale, and that under state law, Meta should be legally responsible for it. Even though it was a long shot case, Torres says, in one sense, he was confident.

[C]

I said very clearly, very early on, look, this company had better be very concerned if we actually get to stand in front of a jury in a community I know very well. I've practiced law in that courthouse. I prosecuted cases in that courthouse. I ran for office in that county. I know those jurors. If they get a chance to hear everything, they're gonna do the right thing. I don't have a worry about that. Where I was nervous about the case is, am I gonna get my day in court? In front of the jury, I had uncertainty about a Section 230 defense. Right.

[D]

Section 230 is the federal law that has protected social media companies and other Internet service providers from being held liable for what other people do on their platforms, even if it was really bad, like if someone harassed or sexually exploited your kid. For 30 years, Internet companies from AOL to Facebook to Grindr have been using Section 230 to block people from taking them to trial. That's what Attorney General Torres was nervous

[C]

about, because the track record was, you never get to see a jury. You never have your day in court. Is this going to be one of those things where a judge says, no, section 230, section 230, you don't get to do this. You will just be one more case in the dustbin of history, in the wastebasket of section230.

[D]

But this case in New Mexico, this one did not get tossed in the wastebasket. Torres and his team were able to do what hadn't been done before. They convinced a judge that Section 230 should not apply in this case. They got their suit in front of a jury and as Torres suspected, the jurors ruled in the state's favor. They held Meta responsible for endangering kids in New Mexico. It was a groundbreaking trial and a groundbreaking verdict. We've reported on some of the other recent social media cases here on the show, but this one in New Mexico was the first. And it's quite a story how Attorney General Torres and his colleagues pulled it off. The Attorney General leads a team of investigators who've spent years going after sexual predators. And together they came up with a shrewd series of sting operations which ended up catching Meta in the crosshairs. I've wanted to hear the story of this sting. So we sent our executive producer Robin Simeon and producer Zach St. Louis to new Mexico. They attended parts of the trial this spring and they also talked to the people who cracked this case open to get the story from investigators and from the Attorney General, all of whom have a chillingly up close and personal view of how kids are being treated on social media.

[C]

There are literally predators everywhere looking for children. We put all the kids in the same big digital playground with no supervision

[D]

from Placement theory and kcrw. I'm Brian Reed. This is question everything we investigate how the truth gets buried, distorted and denied and the ways people are fighting to make it matter again. Stick around. Here's Robin Simeon reporting from her time in New Mexico.

[A]

The investigation that resulted in New Mexico's monumental legal win against Meta requires a descent into an extremely challenging sex crimes against children. The investigation itself is fascinating, creative, original with stealth officers, nail biting stings. But to understand how this victory came about, you got to go down into the guts of the topic. Child sexual exploitation and assault. I promise no graphic descriptions of the images that accompany this work. Still, for the topic alone, this is a warning. This is all happening in the New Mexico Department of Justice in Albuquerque. To get from the Attorney General's office of New Mexico to the ICAC office of New Mexico, that's Internet Crimes Against Children office where the special unit of investigators do their stuff. You get on an elevator going down. My producer Zach and I did this in May.

[E]

Thank you very much.

[A]

We exit and go past a bunch of the state DOJ's cubicles on our left that are lined with a wall of mug shots, a trophy wall of convicted felons. I'm Lauren. Nice to meet you.

[E]

Hi, I'm Zach. Nice to meet you.

[A]

Chief of staff for the New Mexico Department of Justice Lauren Rodriguez guides us take you into the ICAT room. This is where we have all of the. We call them dirty computers because they obviously have child sexual abuse material on them that these guys go through and pinpoint and then charge and do all of that. So I'm going to take you in there. It's kind of loud. We go into a dark, windowless room, maybe 250 square feet in the center of the offices. No one's working in here right now. The room is noisy with the hum of computer servers. The small group of investigators who work in this room process tens of thousands of illegal, unforgettably disturbing images of children, sometimes babies, each year. Evidence found on hard drives and phones used to convict people. The head of the Internet Crimes Against Children Unit, Jonathan Talley, meets my producer, Zach, and me.

[E]

So how many people work in here on a daily basis?

[B]

2 to 3 in here.

[A]

He points out some of the equipment. Three yellow servers and some extra large computer monitors, hard drives, a whiteboard, and some real detective Y stuff. What is this black box?

[B]

So that black box is. It's like a. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of a Faraday bag. So this is a Faraday box. What it does is it blocks radio signal from somebody being able to remotely wipe their devices. So the agents can put their hands in those holes, their gloves in there. They can look through that screen and actually work on a live phone without fear of it being remote wifi.

[A]

There's a phone in there?

[B]

Yeah, there is one in there right now.

[A]

Jonathan is a witness in the case against Meta. He put on a suit for court, but he much prefers his black military hoodie and jeans. He testified, because the work that he and his ICAC investigators do, the way that they do it, played a crucial role in New Mexico winning its case against Meta. This is the process ICAC investigators use to catch individual child sex predators on the Internet. ICAC gets tips from the national center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is a hotline used to collect suspicious, potentially illegal online activity from around the country. The center sorts through those leads, then sends the most serious ones to ICAC agencies in their respective states. Those tips are where John and his ICAC investigators start.

[B]

We'll jump on those platforms, especially ones that we're seeing a lot of cyber tips coming in from, you know, the most current trends.

[A]

Next, the team will set a trap.

[B]

We create the profile. The photos that we use are typically of ourselves or somebody within the office. And then we use AI to generate Their photo into either a, a female child, a male child, or you've made

[A]

profiles of yourself as. Both.

[B]

I have, yes.

[A]

How old?

[B]

The youngest I've done is 11 years old. As 11 year old boy and 11 year old girl, are you literally like

[E]

taking a photo of yourself, putting it into an AI and saying turn this image into a 16 year old girl.

[B]

That's exactly what you're doing.

[D]

Wow.

[E]

Yeah, wow.

[B]

It has to be somebody that works for a law enforcement agency. They have to sign a waiver and all that good stuff, stuff.

[A]

When I asked why they use selfies at all instead of having AI just do it, they wouldn't say top secret. There are very strict rules about doing this particular kind of work. Making fake profiles online.

[B]

We don't entice, we don't post any, any sort of sexualized image. We're not even in revealing clothing. It's today, you know, in a hoodie and jeans. My photo would be in hoodie and jeans. Obviously if we create a profile of like a little girl, we may add like some little flower patches to the pants, make it look like something an 11 year old girl would wear. But nothing in bikinis or you're posing on a bed. I mean absolutely nothing like that. You may get somebody that says, well, send me a picture of you and your brother so I know that it's real. And so we'll generate an AI, you know, quote unquote brother to stand there with them. And so that way it looks like what these predators are asking for.

[A]

These kinds of benign looking photos and fake accounts can garner leads. Suspected pedophiles who follow comment like or DM the accounts almost immediately. John told me when he was training to do this work three years ago, he and another officer took a week long class where everyone practiced making an account. He said his friend's fake profile got hits right away. John's account took a little longer, but sitting in class, he soon found himself chatting with some guy in the state of Georgia who thought John was a child.

[B]

It's one of the most memorable classes I've ever taken. It's memorable just because it's amazing how quickly some of these predators and bad actors reach out to what they believe are our minor children.

[A]

It's memorable because it changed how you see the world.

[F]

Basically.

[B]

Yeah, it's absolutely eye opening.

[A]

Having traced the IP address of the guy in his undercover chat, John sent his very first potential suspect's information to an ICAC unit in Georgia so they could investigate further.

[E]

Would you please introduce yourself to the Jury.

[G]

My name is Ricky Kitsch. I'm an investigator, criminal intelligence analyst with the New Mexico Department of Justice.

[A]

Ricky Kitsch is another investigator who works in the windowless room. This is him testifying in the trial against Meta. Back in February, Kitsch built the undercover profile that ended up being at the center of New Mexico's case against Meta.

[E]

What name did you use for that account?

[G]

I used a Persona name of Carolina Burney, also known, so her username on the platforms would be Issa B.

[A]

In this case, Kitsch created his fake account with the goal of catching a known child predator that he, Jon and other investigators were circling a man who at the time had an outstanding warrant for allegedly abusing his young son. They needed more information from him to make an arrest, so they made this fake account, Issa B. That was targeted to track him down.

[E]

How did you select the name Issa B?

[G]

The name Issa came from a rapper's album, 21 Savage, back in about 2017. Came out with an album called the Issa Album. It's basically short for. It's a. The. The B part of it was basically because it was a sting operation.

[A]

Police humor. B as in bee sting.

[E]

How old was Issabi? The Issabi Persona that you created?

[G]

She was 13.

[A]

But Kitsch registered her on Facebook as an adult because registering her as 13 would have restricted the account. He wanted her profile visible to everyone. To set her birthday, all he had to do was type in a date on Facebook. There's no formal age verification. Age verification is one of the main things New Mexico wants Meta to change, since right now it's just the honor system and kids can easily get around it. Then Kitsch posted azisabee, a photo of a young girl in a sports jersey at what looks like a softball field holding a certificate with a medal around her neck. The post read, travel ball tryouts soon. Another post, first real day of seventh grade. In this photo, she has a slight smile with bangs and long hair, a white shirt buttoned all the way up. She sits in front of an Olin Mills type backdrop of orange autumn leaves. In another post, an image of a small outstretched hand with a tiny tooth in its palm. She says she just lost a baby tooth. Remember, the investigators were just intending to solicit contact from this one suspect, but Kitsch's fake profile got inundated.

[E]

Was that Issa B profile receiving friend requests?

[G]

Yes.

[B]

How many?

[G]

I would say possibly hundreds a day.

[E]

From whom?

[G]

Various strangers on the Internet all over the world. She quickly. Within. I would say within a month's, period of time had maxed the maximum amount allowable of friends on Facebook. She had reached 5,000 friends and she had approximately 7,000 followers.

[A]

ICAC investigators had to do something. What was initially a profile to try to catch a single known predator turned into a chillingly popular profile by the thousands in a matter of weeks. Kitsch ran this information up the chain of command out of the windowless room and up to the large sun filled office on the fourth floor of the building where New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres sat at the head of a conference table looking at Issabi's account. The AG was wrapped.

[C]

This is the moment where I was like, oh wow. Her growth was so rapid in terms of followers and friend requests and things like that. There's a flood of inbound friend requests, mostly from men, unknown men.

[A]

Most of Issaby's followers were men around the world between 18 and 40. Some commenting on her posts saying they love her and that she's sexy, gorgeous. She gets invited to what's called a Loli chat group, short for Lolita, that has naked photos of kids and porn. She gets DM dick pics, some guy DMs her saying, quote, his interest has been piqued before offering to, quote, unquote, spoil her with five grand a week to be a sugar baby. The detectives running the Isabi account, to see what would happen, they took one user who sent Isabi a porn video and reported it to Facebook. And the company responded in a message on Facebook which is also in the court records, saying they reviewed the account that had sent her pornography and didn't find anything against their standards. What's more, Meta started recommending reels to Isabi of explicit content of teen girls. And then, apparently because Isabi's account was growing so fast, AG Torres explained, Facebook start sending her information about how she

[C]

could continue to grow her following and monetize the account.

[A]

The Attorney General couldn't believe it. He was both enlightened and incensed by the men, yes. But doubly so by Meta for facilitating seemingly even encouraging these connections.

[C]

There wasn't a safety person that got on there and said, wow, huh? Why does this account of this young person have that kind of explosive growth? What appears to be 12 year old girl having an explosive trajectory in the number of followers on the platform.

[A]

There's no red flag.

[C]

Not only is there no red flag, it is. How do you amplify? How can we help you amplify what this is?

[E]

Right?

[C]

That's when you know that something structurally is badly broken inside of that company because a normal human being would have looked at those pictures and thought, huh, why would a 12 year old girl showing images of losing a baby tooth and being on a travel volleyball team suddenly have a massive increase in the number of followers? What in what is, what is going on? Right like that. That was the first moment for me when it crossed from I think there might be an issue here to oh, there is a very, very serious problem inside of this company and on these platforms.

[A]

So the attorney general decided I'm going to go after Meta and the person who runs it.

[F]

Would you agree that you were aware that you had a problem with child sexual abuse material on your platforms at least as far back as 2007?

[E]

Are you asking about me personally? I don't, I don't remember.

[A]

That's after a quick break.

[F]

Foreign.

[A]

This is Kim Masters, host of the Business on kcrw. Every week we take a deep dive into the deals and the drama that shape Hollywood. From the power plays in the boardroom to the creative battles on set, we bring you the inside stories behind the entertainment headlines. Check out the business part of the NPR podcast network. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres grew up around fights in court. His dad was a prosecutor. Torres tried his first case in federal court with his dad as co counsel. Today his dad teaches his daughter's mock trial team. Going after Meta was the culmination of a career spent convicting child predators and the result of many years ingesting images from the windowless room.

[C]

When I started off this work, you really had to go into these boutique or unknown corners of the Internet to try and find this. I remember some of the early cases I worked on where there would just be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of images. We would pull out hard drives filled with images and my job when I was a prosecutor, what I would do is I would have my agent review it and I would say find the worst 150. And then I would look at the worst 150 images three or four times a week and pick and narrow that down to 25 or 30 because in terms of prosecution, you're trying to identify the most impactful evidence. I did that work before I had kids.

[A]

This seems like a very, very personal fight for you.

[C]

Yeah, I take it personally because most of my life and my professional work has been trying to help victims of crime and particularly kids and others who are harmed by people who are doing terrible things. And at every stage of my career I have always felt limited in my ability to help the next victim Because I'm only doing this one at a time. I'm finally in a position to highlight a company who has abandoned any kind of ethical or moral decision framework in choosing how to conduct itself, and as a consequence, are harming vulnerable people, and they knowingly are doing it.

[A]

In December of 2023, the Attorney General filed a complaint alleging that Meta's apps were not just passive platforms, you know, spaces for dialogue, but harmful products that connect would be child sex abusers with kids, in his words, functioning as a, quote, marketplace for predators in search of children upon whom to pray. The AG sought to get around the Section 230 shield that protects companies from being held liable by making a product liability argument saying they were holding Meta liable for the dangerous design of its products, not for the speech of its users. This argument is similar to an argument used in California against Meta. But because of Section 230, it was a very long shot. When the AG made this argument, it hadn't yet been successful in California, so he really wasn't sure it would work, but it did.

[C]

I remember getting a call from the Chief deputy and he says, yep, we're still alive. They denied their Section 230 motion to dismiss.

[A]

We're going to court in January of this year. The State of New Mexico learned they'd done it. They'd head to court in February. By then, the AG and his team had amassed a bunch of important evidence about Meta, including documents and testimony from inside the company, along the way learning some horrendous stats, like the fact that Meta acknowledged internally that dating back to 2019, the Instagram algorithm was funneling the accounts of minors to suspected groomers at four times the rate that they were being shared with everyday adults.

[C]

At this point, I have seen so many stats. The one that jumped out at me was that by its own estimates, the company had come up with a number that half a million kids a day were being subjected to sexually explicit material, sexual harassment, grooming, or exploitation.

[G]

Oh, wow.

[C]

Yeah, Half a million every day.

[A]

Meta disputes these numbers, saying by their current metrics, the number is significantly lower. Via internal documents obtained by New Mexico for its case in 2019, Meta's own employees warned that something CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted to do would make it harder to catch child predators. He wanted to make end to end encryption the default setting on Facebook Messenger. End to end encryption makes direct messages, texts, private to everyone else, including Meta. While changing a default setting may sound small inside Meta, some employees said this move, enacting end to end encryption as a default setting would block them from being able to see and report about 7.5 million instances a year of child sex abuse materials. Meta's head of content policy wrote in a chat message back then that were they to go through with this default setting, we are about to do a bad thing as a company. This is so irresponsible, end quote. But Zuckerberg did it anyway. In 2023, Facebook made end to end encryption the default. New Mexico used all this to build its case, arguing Meta has created a monster. ISABI was key to the initial legal complaint. That undercover account makes up 14 pages of the 228 page document. But Isabi did more than help demonstrate the volume of child predators on Facebook to the court. Head of icac, John Talley had been following a known predator on other platforms

[B]

when he actually made contact with one of our undercover profiles.

[A]

Oh, Isa B.

[B]

Yes. He made contact with Issa B.

[A]

And so you were already following this person?

[B]

I was. From a completely unrelated tip.

[A]

Did that lead to an arrest?

[H]

It did.

[B]

It led to two arrests. Him are suspects from the original cyber tip and his brother. They both ended up contacting isabe, and it was actually the Issabe profile that helped us track these guys down. They lived in an RV and they would move from state park to state park kind of sporadically. So we were having a hard time tracking them down. And it was because of the SB profile. They told her where. Where they were at, and so we were able to. To head out to Truth or Consequences, Elephant Butte Lake and. And arrest these guys.

[A]

So appropriate.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Truth or.

[B]

Truth or Consequences. That's. Yep, exactly.

[A]

Do you remember the name of the profile of the person that you arrested?

[B]

It was his actual name.

[A]

Oh, yeah. He wasn't trying to hide or.

[B]

No, he. He and his brother both were absolutely hiding in plain sight.

[A]

I don't even know how to make sense out of that. You're saying these two child predators, they're using their. Their legal name and soliciting children?

[E]

Yes.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah.

[F]

Boy.

[A]

How surprised were they when you showed up?

[E]

Very.

[G]

Very.

[B]

When we. When we knocked on their door at six in the morning, they were. They were shocked.

[A]

John Talley says Meta had never flagged either of these men for their conduct on Facebook. That said, when Meta found out about the fake. It's a B profile. Which the cops were using to stop child predators. The company did shut down that account. Cops making fake accounts on Meta isn't against the law, but it does break Meta's rules. Attorney General Torres told me that Meta shutting down the ISABI account effectively blocked them from all of the leads of suspected pedophiles associated with that account. He doesn't know what Facebook did with those.

[C]

To this day, I don't know what they did. But the point is they are not actively supporting law enforcement and saying, hey, come into these spaces and help us police these spaces. And the reason they wouldn't do that is if you have a bunch of undercover cops on their platforms finding predators every other day, how long do you think it's going to take before mom and dad start waking up and saying, wait a minute, this digital playground doesn't seem safe? The experience that we have as middle aged people scrolling through Instagram, somebody's trying to sell us an insurance product or a shoe or somebody I went to college with is, oh, look who's having a. Yeah, you're saying, look who's having a bait, right? Night and day and night and day. It's what happens is understanding that there is a world out there where they're literally predators everywhere looking for children and they don't have to linger outside of a playground like they would in the 70s or 80s to try and lure a kid over. We put all the kids in the same big digital playground and the design choices are entirely built around adding more kids to the playground and keeping them in the playground as long as possible and knowing that in that corner there is some group of creeps that are just there. Parents and adults do not have a clear picture. They've never been in the windowless room.

[A]

Meta says that New Mexico pulled selective quotes from Meta employees and internal documents to build their case. They've made this same argument in other cases as well.

[C]

Meta's response was, oh, well, this is not representative of people's experience on the platform. This is a distortion. This is cherry picked information.

[A]

During the trial, Meta objected to the accounts the investigators had set up to catch predators, saying they aren't representative of real teenagers. For instance, in response to the porn video message to Issabi's account, the one she flags to Facebook for violating standards, she also messages a playful response to that video posted in its sender, commenting on the video. So sexy. I love it. Here is Meta lawyer Kevin Huff questioning Ricky Kitchigan.

[H]

You would agree with me that the typical teenager in New Mexico doesn't set up a public account on Facebook, amass almost 5,000 friends and 7,000 followers, many of whom are adult men, post sexually provocative posts to lure pedophiles, reach out to suspected pedophiles, and have sexual conversations with known pedophiles Right.

[G]

Again, I would take exception to the term typical teen in New Mexico.

[H]

So you think a typical teen does all those things I just listed?

[G]

I would say in my. Based on my experience, I would. I say teens know and are involved in a lot more than you think they are.

[H]

Can you answer my question? Do you think a typical teen in New Mexico does all those things I just listed?

[G]

I don't think they reach out to pedophiles to attempt to locate them, no.

[A]

There's a debate in court about some of the photos Kitsch posted to the Issabi account. Meta says they're sexually suggestive. Kitsch disagrees. We can't see the specific photo in question to consider it for ourselves because it's redacted from the court video. This was a big part of Meta's defense. In a nutshell, typical kids don't attract predators, let alone chat with them on the stand. Kitsch confirms he engaged in sexual conversations with his target as part of the undercover operation because he says he was trying to locate him and arrest him. Meta didn't respond to our questions, but in a statement about New Mexico's lawsuit, a Meta spokesperson said, quote, we strongly disagree with these allegations and are confident the evidence will show our long standing commitment to supporting young people. For over a decade, we've listened to parents, worked with experts in law enforcement and conducted in depth research to understand the issues that matter most. Meta points to rolling out teen accounts in 2024 which require parent permission to change certain settings and which make it more difficult for strangers to contact kids. Back when the complaint was still chugging through the courts, the AG decided to build another undercover Facebook account and it revealed new damning evidence against the company. The new profile was named Daisy Roanhorse. Daisy was a 13 year old girl living in New Mexico. To make the account look more real. Fake account. Daisy had a fake mother who had her own account.

[C]

And within I think a couple of months, we had enough information and enough communication from potentially hands on offenders that we set up a sting operation in Gallup, New Mexico. At a motel there, we had three individuals show up thinking that they were gonna have sex with an underage girl and they were arrested and taken into custody. But what we then figured out, and this was the really shocking part, two of the three people that we took into custody had already been flagged inside of Meta as having previously inappropriate contact with kids and they were still on the platform.

[A]

One of these men had been flagged 22 times by Meta's own tool for detecting bullying and harassment. And in addition to trying to have sex with Daisy Roanhorse, a supposed minor had made a death threat to her. But at the time of his arrest, his account was still live. One of the other men convicted in connection with Daisy Roanhorse was a twice convicted sex offender who'd been banned by Meta back in 2021. Who'd been banned by Meta back in 2021, but he was back online again, detected and flagged by Meta as a threat. His account also was still active at the time of his arrest. In court filings from a different case, Meta's former head of safety and well being for Instagram said in 2020 the company had a strike policy. 17 strikes, meaning 17 strikes and you're out. Kicked off the platform for accounts that engaged in sex trafficking, which seems wildly lax. As of November 2025, Meta has a one strike policy for exploitation and sex trafficking. The AG called the Daisy Roanhorse sting operation Metaphile Files, spelled with a ph like pedophile and did a press conference

[C]

about it good morning yesterday afternoon at

[A]

approximately 2:35pm where he makes an appeal to all those parents scrolling innocently through Instagram. Wake up.

[C]

The danger presented by Meta and its social media platforms doesn't just exist in the virtual world, it actually endangers children in the real world.

[A]

And he laid the blame for this danger at the feet of one parent in particular.

[C]

This is Mark Zuckerberg's fault.

[A]

Zuckerberg has three daughters aged 3 to 10. Attorney General Torres named Zuckerberg in the suit personally as a defendant and dedicated an entire section of the complaint 14 pages against him, making the case that the decisions that put kids at risk came right from him. Torres team got to question Zuckerberg under oath, not on the stand, but in a taped deposition that was played in the trial on CVN.com, i watched all two hours and 16 minutes of it for a cool 99 bucks. Watching him, I really wanted to know how does Mark Zuckerberg think about kids safety? Here's what I learned by watching Mark Zuckerberg's direct examination from the State of New Mexico. Mark Zuckerberg has known for at least 14 years that kids under 13 use Meta's platforms by lying about their ages to make accounts. In a chat exchange with Peter Deng, Facebook's then product management director for the company, they discuss how it would be a problem for Meta if kids under 13 didn't lie about their ages and went elsewhere to other social media platforms. In the chat exchange, Zuckerberg isn't concerned on the stand, a lawyer for New Mexico reads Zuckerberg's own words to him from that chat.

[F]

And then you respond, you think that's a big deal. I was under the assumption that lots of kids just lied today. Did I read that correctly?

[E]

I think so. And that's sort of in line with what we just talked about a few minutes ago.

[F]

Right. Just to be clear, you meant lied about their age, right?

[E]

I assume so.

[A]

New Mexico brings up child sex abuse material which has been documented inside the company since the early years. In his deposition, Zuckerberg is asked about the problem of child sex abuse material on his platforms. But he won't call it that a problem. Going back to 2007, an email showed he knew about pornographic material displaying child sex abuse on the platform. Back then, it was brought to his attention.

[F]

Would you agree that you were aware that you had a problem with child sexual abuse material on your platforms at least as far back as 2007?

[E]

Are you asking about me personally? I don't remember. I mean, assuming that I got this email and we went through it, then I suppose I would have been aware, but I don't remember. I mean, this was almost 20 years ago.

[F]

Okay. And would you agree that as of 2021, you had an even larger problem with child sexual abuse material or cei child exploitative imagery on your platforms?

[E]

Yeah, I mean, I disagree with that, the characterization around this. But if what you're asking is, are

[F]

there

[E]

a set of people out of our very large community who try to do this reprehensible behavior and do we try to stop them and turn them into authorities? The answer is yes.

[A]

A hot topic. And the best example I found of Zuckerberg seeming genuinely unsure what to do was when it came to end, to end encryption. Because private messages, it's in the name, are private. And people like privacy. Public messages are okay too, but they can be, sometimes are monitored by the company, which opens the door to governments or police to spy what's good for adults. Privacy and secured private messages may not be good for kids. In its deposition, Zuckerberg spoke about that.

[E]

Safety is obviously extremely important. People also care a lot about privacy and security too. And sometimes these things come into tension. And that. That is a difficult thing that we have to deal with in running the company. And we try to take that very seriously and do the best that we can at balancing these different equities. But on balance, I mean, people do not, and I'm talking about good people, not criminals, do not necessarily want their messages to be able to be read by Meta. So we designed the system in the way that most people in the world are going to want it to behave.

[A]

Most people, including pedophiles. One last observation about Mark Zuckerberg's deposition. Remember when the AG compared Meta's platforms to unsupervised playgrounds for creeps who want to harm kids?

[C]

We put all the kids in the same big digital playground, knowing that in that corner there is some group of creeps.

[A]

I wondered when he said it if that was a bit of hyperbole. A playground is a real place irl, as the kids say in real life. Maybe that analogy wasn't precise enough and in that way unfair. But on the stand, Mark Zuckerberg made a very similar analogy. To his benefit. Answering questions about Meta's responsibility in assisting the spread of child sex abuse material, Zuckerberg compared Meta's platforms to a city as a defense.

[E]

I don't think people would expect that, like every crime in a city is going to be stopped or prevented.

[A]

This kind of comparison is dangerous. The rules of a city are governed by us. Meta isn't. We decide things all the time and should about how to keep kids safe. Rules, liabilities, common sense for being out here in real life. Lots of companies, all of them except social media, would have hell to pay if the person in charge had a hard time remembering a kid porn situation being brought to their attention 20 years ago. Mark Zuckerberg isn't holding onto the gravity of that. On February 2nd of this year, the state of New Mexico went to court against Meta. The trial lasted seven weeks. Ricky Kitsch gave his testimony and was cross examined, as did Mark Zuckerberg. Through that recorded deposition, the fictitious Issabi Facebook account was a central figure. And the state of New Mexico won a $375 million judgment, a judgment that Meta is currently appealing. Money that will go directly to the state. That's the tip of the spear. Winning against Meta unlocked a second trial where New Mexico got to suggest a bucket of changes and request more money from meta.953 million to be exact, to remedy harm to New Mexico's kids. And right now, a judge is deliberating on all of that. New Mexico Judge Brian Beadsheid is somewhere trying to decide which of the suggested changes to Meta's platforms would improve child safety in New Mexico. And there are a lot of suggested changes by the state. Seven itemized pages of them. Things like mandatory age verification, preventing adults who are not directly connected to a minor from contacting a minority. Even a state appointed Monitor someone to be a check on Meta when it falls short of the new rules. We're going to get into those in future reporting. Some seem straightforward, others less so. A big one for Torres is making Meta add parental warnings when opening one of its apps. Kind of like the warnings that were put on cigarettes. He's just spitballing, but something like, you

[C]

understand that your child is likely to see graphic images of not only pornography, but be contacted by unknown adults and targeted and potentially exploited for the sexual gratification of a predator who is in this space and the company knows are present in this space. Do you agree to do that? Click yes.

[A]

The multibillion dollar tech giant that is Meta is not taking favorably to being boss. And in response to the suggested changes from the state, has shot them all down, saying their requests are some combination of impractical, technically impossible, burdensome to the user, and prohibitively expensive. And ultimately saying, if you think you can make us change our products, we'll just pull our apps from New Mexico entirely. No Instagram in this date. No WhatsApp, no Facebook. Is that a solution for you?

[C]

No, my solution is to get this company to follow the law and build a safer product. That's my goal. Just because New Mexico is a small place, which means it's a place that Meta feels like they can intimidate or bully with a threat to withdraw from the marketplace, doesn't mean I'm going to accept as a price of their continued presence here a certain amount of kids being targeted, exploited, or ending up killing themselves because their product continues to be dangerous. And it's totally disingenuous, too. Right. Like Australia just passed a ban for kids under 16. Has Meta withdrawn from Australia? No, Australia's too big a market to threaten to leave, unlike New Mexico.

[A]

So you don't think they're being sincere when they say that?

[C]

I think they're making the same decisions they always make. This is about money. Money, Right. They're making this threat because this is a small state and it's better financially for them to go dark in New Mexico than it is to build a product for New Mexico. Because think about this. This is the real fight behind it all. If we get the judge to order them to do what we've asked and build a safer product, and they build a safer product in New Mexico and they turn that on, what are they going to say in the other 49 states? What are they going to say to every other country in the world? If they can build it here? There will be enormous pressure for them. To turn on the New Mexico solution globally. So we're always back with them. This is not an ethical decision. It is not a moral decision. They don't want to build it because it will cost them money.

[A]

New Mexico's ability to go to court at all against Meta, just like California's ability to get Meta into court, hindsight being what it is, demonstrates something kind of simple. People can say what they want in an arena, but it has to be safe to go inside the building. The lawsuits are about the arena, not what people are saying in the arena, not section 230. Ag. Torres actually told me if he could have Congress change one thing, it would be to repeal Section 230, which surprised me because he just found a way around it. But he's adamant, I think, that there

[C]

was no section 230. You and I wouldn't be having this conversation. You'd have had the LA decision 15 years ago. In other words, had they been on the hook from the beginning, how many kids would we have saved? What if there is no section 230? And Mark Zuckerberg, when he comes up with the idea of Facebook at Inception, knows I am going to be responsible from day one for the choices that I make that endanger kids in this country. This is about kids killing themselves and harming themselves or falling prey to predators. Mark Zuckerberg, he's not on your side. He's gathering every bit of data that you have ever given him from every interaction, every click to do one thing and one thing only. And it's not to make sure that you have free expression rights. It's to sell you stuff. That's what it exists to do. That's why it exists. And if I could do one thing, it would be to take those executives and put them in that room and watch. You look at the images, you look at what they do. You look at what these guys engage in. This is so brutal and so extreme, and it makes me so angry that someone would contribute to that in any way.

[A]

The decision from Judge Beadsheid about what Meadow will need to change is expected any day now. Producer Zach St. Louis and I will be back with what happened in that courtroom when the judge reaches his verdict.

[D]

That's Robin Simeon, our show's executive producer. Please go check out our new Instagram account, questioneverything podcast, where we've been putting up some of this tough reporting about Instagram on the platform itself. Today's episode was produced by Robin Simeon and Zach St. Louis. It was edited by Kevin Sullivan with help from Emanuel Berry and me. Our team also includes contributing producers Sam Egan, contributing editors Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney, and associate producer Kevin Shepard. This episode was fact checked by Marisa Robertson, texter, mixing and sound design by Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley. Evie Kwong produces our social media Special thanks to John Blair at the New Mexico Department of Justice and Courtroom View Network for the trial audio. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seiple, Tejal Azumara, Natalie Hill and Jennifer Farrow. Thank you for listening.