Snapchat's Algorithm Alleged to Link Minor with Sex Offenders

February 22, 2024

A court decision found Snapchat not responsible under Section 230, despite its algorithm repeatedly connecting a minor with convicted sex offenders, resulting in sexual assault incidents in both 2019 and 2021. The platform's 'Quick Add' feature is suspected of facilitating these inappropriate connections.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.600, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 4.3 — similarity 0.594, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.594, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: snapchat
Alleged developer: snapchat
Alleged harmed parties: minors

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/646

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.