International
New Mexico sues Meta, Mark Zuckerberg for facilitating child sex trafficking
From LifeSiteNews
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez concluded that Facebook and Instagram have become ‘prime locations’ for sexual predators to trade child pornography and ‘solicit minors for sex.’
New Mexico’s attorney general filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, for facilitating child sex trafficking as well as the distribution of child sex abuse material.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a career prosecutor who has specialized in internet crimes against children, concluded after his office’s months-long investigation that Meta’s social media platforms are “not safe spaces for children, but rather prime locations for predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex.”
The New Mexico Office of the Attorney General found that Meta “directs harmful and inappropriate material” at minors and “allows unconnected adults to have unfettered access to them,” despite the fact that Meta is capable of both identifying these users as minors and “providing warnings or other protections against” the harmful material. Worse, such material “poses substantial dangers of solicitation and trafficking.”
According to the lawsuit, the investigation found that, “[s]pecifically, with accounts clearly belonging to children,” Meta has:
Proactively served and directed them to a stream of egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content;
Enabled adults to find, message, and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos;
Fostered unmoderated user groups devoted to or facilitating Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC);
Allowed users to search for, like, share, and sell a crushing volume of child sexual abuse material (CSAM);
Allowed, and failed to detect, a fictional mother offering her 13-year old for trafficking, and solicited the 13-year old to create her own professional page and sell advertising.
Investigators reported Meta accounts showing sexually explicit depictions of children but found that about half of a sample of the reported content was still available days before they filed a lawsuit. Removed content often reappeared, or Meta recommended “alternative, equally problematic content to users,” the investigators found.
While a search for pornography on Facebook was “blocked and returned no results,” the same search on Instagram returned “numerous” accounts depicting pornography, nudity, pedophilia, and sexual assault.
Remarkably, according to the lawsuit, “certain child exploitative content” is 10 times more common on Facebook and Instagram as compared to the notorious pornographic website PornHub and the “adult content” platform OnlyFans.
The investigators’ findings underscore the growing problem not only of child sex trafficking but of “porn-made pedophiles,” a phenomenon testified to by child protection expert Michael Sheath. These are “people who were not initially attracted to children” but whose brains have been “rewired by compulsive porn consumption to be attracted to children, often because they escalate to increasingly extreme content as their porn addiction progresses,” in the words of Jonathon Van Maren.
The Unherd article “How porn breeds paedophiles” shares what Sheath learned as a probation officer trying to understand male sex offenders.
“Eventually, these men would reveal how they operated. Many of the men talked about mainstream, free and legal porn having been a gateway to the illegal stuff, and some went on to create porn themselves, which, of course, requires children to be abused,” he explained.
The findings of the New Mexico AG’s office have been corroborated by a two-year investigation by The Guardian, which found that Meta is failing to “prevent criminals from using its platforms to buy and sell children for sex,” as minors are being advertised for sex trafficking on Instagram, and Facebook is also being used to facilitate such trafficking.
In fact, according to the Guardian report, several pension and investment funds that own Meta stock sued the company in March for failing to act on “systemic evidence” that its platforms are facilitating sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation.
Despite Congress’s efforts to dismantle the GEC, its core operations appear intact under a new name and nearly identical mission.
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The way things stand right now, the shutting down of the US State Department’s disgraced Global Engagement Center (GEC) doesn’t appear to equate to the GEC actually being dismantled.
Rather, the unit, notorious for its role in flagging social media posts during the outgoing administration, seems to have simply undergone a rebranding. Now, the State Department has the Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub. Matt Taibbi of the Twitter Files describes what happened here as an “absurd prank” that defies Congress, which moved to force the end of the GEC. One reason for this conclusion is the result of checking the former and the newly founded unit’s mission statements for any differences. And there are virtually none. The GEC Mission was officially, “To direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate US Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.” And here’s what R/FIMI Hub is supposed to do: “To direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.” The difference between the two texts is R/FIMI Hub going for, “(…) efforts of the Federal Government” – rather than GEC’s “US Federal Government efforts.” Not only that – and the fact that this alleged focus on foreign threats turned into a smokescreen for going after online speech at home – R/FIMI Hub is also reportedly set to keep about 50 GEC staff, and continue to be funded, as before, with just under $30 million via grants and contracts. Shuttering the GEC was a cause championed by Congress Republicans through a number of investigations, essentially suspecting that its role was to facilitate, through obfuscation, what is otherwise illegal government involvement in censorship. They are now, even though coming to power at all levels, presented with a case that illustrates the functioning of what many of them like to call “the deep state” – a permanent power structure underlying elected ones, where a brazen “rebrand” of this kind can happen right in front of everyone. Former GEC staff are reportedly planning to carry on their work, dispersed across the State Department, thus creating the illusion of the unit being disbanded, but with R/FIMI Hub seemingly envisaged as just that – a hub for their continued activities. The activities included the GEC teaming up with third parties like the Global Disinformation Index that would “score” content for advertisers, to the detriment of conservative media. |
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Alberta
Alberta’s Danielle Smith meets with Trump at Mar-a-Lago for ‘friendly and constructive’ meeting
From LifeSiteNews
Meetings of these kinds in the past would normally have included Canada’s official ambassador, however, Smith has not waited for the Trudeau government to advocate for Canadian energy and instead has gone at it alone.
Premier of Alberta Danielle Smith met with incoming U.S. President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home to champion “ethically” sourced Albertan oil and gas only days before the president-elect is set to be inaugurated, in what she said was a “friendly and constructive” meeting.
“Over the last 24 hours I had the opportunity to meet President @realdonaldtrump at Mar-a-Lago last night and at his golf club this morning. We had a friendly and constructive conversation during which I emphasized the mutual importance of the U.S. – Canadian energy relationship, and specifically, how hundreds of thousands of American jobs are supported by energy exports from Alberta,” wrote Smith on X about her weekend meeting with Trump.
The unprecedented meeting came at the same time Trump appears to have soured relations with Canadian Liberal elites over his annexation talk.
It also comes after soon-to-be-gone Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with Trump at Mar-a-lago last month and appeared to refuse to step up and defend the interests of Canadian energy over Trump’s threats to slap high tariffs on Canadian goods once he takes office.
Smith noted about her meeting with Trump that she was able to have “similar discussions” about championing Albertan energy “with several key allies of the incoming administration and was encouraged to hear their support for a strong energy and security relationship with Canada.”
“On behalf of Albertans, I will continue to engage in constructive dialogue and diplomacy with the incoming administration and elected federal and state officials from both parties and will do all I can to further Alberta’s and Canada’s interests,” she wrote.
Since taking office in 2015, the Trudeau government has continued to push a radical environmental agenda like the agendas being pushed by the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the United Nations’ “Sustainable Development Goals.”
Smit, on the other hand, has been a fierce opponent of Trudeau’s green energy agenda and an advocate for the oil and gas industry.
She will be attending Trump’s inauguration later next week.
Observer notes Trump made ‘beeline’ for Smith to meet her at Mar-a-Lago event
Political analyst for the Calgary Sun Rick Bell, who knows Smith and speaks with her regularly, noted about her meeting with Trump that when “Trump and his family and entourage” arrived he made “a beeline for Smith. He has obviously been told she is the premier of Alberta.”
“Smith, as you know, has recently been speaking non-stop about oil and gas and is no fan of tariffs,” Bell wrote.
Bell noted how Smith and Trump spoke about “energy, about oil and gas, about Alberta and Canada,” adding that she told him that production of Alberta oil is “ramping up in a big way and the U.S. buys a lot of Alberta oil.”
“Smith asks if Trump wants more of our oil. Trump does. It is by far Canada’s biggest export to the Americans,” wrote Bell.
Smith, in her message about her meeting with Trump, noted that Canada and the United States are both “proud and independent nations with one of the most important security alliances on earth and the largest economic partnership in history.”
She emphasized how Alberta needs to preserve its “independence while we grow this critical partnership for the benefit of Canadians and Americans for generations to come.”
Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world, with most of it being in Alberta, which is produced ethically, unlike in other nations.
Smith’s meeting with Trump is unusual in that it has happened right before he will become president. Meetings of these kinds in the past would normally have included Canada’s official ambassador, however, Smith has not waited for the Trudeau government to advocate for Canadian energy and instead has gone at it alone.
Recently, Trump has drawn the ire of many Canadian politicians, including Conservatives, after he said rather brazenly last week that he was considering using “economic force” to make Canada the 51st U.S. state.
He claimed that there is a $200 billion trade deficit between Canada and the U.S. regarding spending on “subsidies” and the fact the U.S. military is there to also “protect Canada.”
Smith and others did not seem too offended by Trump’s remarks, most likely realizing they may be part of his negotiating strategy.
Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre, who likely will soon be the nation’s next prime minister, however, had choice words for Trump.
Trump’s comments came only a day after Trudeau announced he plans to step down as Liberal Party leader once a new leader has been chosen. He was approved by Governor General Mary Simon to prorogue parliament until March 24. This means he is still serving as prime minister, but all parliamentary business has been stopped.
Smith was against forced COVID jabs, her United Conservative government has in recent months banned men from competing in women’s sports came and passed a bill banning so-called “top and bottom” surgeries for minors as well as other extreme forms of transgender ideology.
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