"The parents of a 16-year-old who took his own life after he fell victim to a sextortion gang on Instagram are suing Meta for the alleged wrongful death of their son, in the first UK case of its kind. Murray Dowey died in December 2023 at his family home in Dunblane, after being tricked into sending intimate pictures to an Instagram contact. He thought it was a girl his own age, but it turned out to be overseas criminals involved in financially motivated sexual extortion."
"We know what we're up against. But it's time social media companies took accountability for what they've done to our young people. It's not just sextortion, they're causing multiple harms, and they've been allowed to get away with it. The lawsuit was filed in Delaware superior court by the US-based Social Media Victims Law Center on behalf of the Doweys, as well as the family of Levi Maciejewski, a 13-year-old from Pennsylvania who was also a victim of sextortion."
Murray Dowey, 16, died in December 2023 after being tricked into sending intimate images to an Instagram contact who posed as a peer but was part of an overseas sextortion gang. His parents, Ros and Mark, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Meta in Delaware superior court, joined by the family of 13-year-old Levi Maciejewski. The complaint alleges Meta prioritized engagement over user safety, used personal data to power recommendation products that directed teen users to known predators, continued sharing Follower/Following data, and failed to implement affordable safety features, making the boys' deaths foreseeable consequences of Meta's design choices.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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