Newly unredacted documents from New Mexico’s lawsuit against Meta underscore the company’s “historical reluctance” to keep children safe on its platforms, the complaint says.

New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta in December, saying the company failed to protect young users from exposure to child sexual abuse material and allowed adults to solicit explicit imagery from them.

Internal employee messages and presentations from 2020 and 2021 unredacted from the lawsuit Wednesday show the company was aware of issues such as adult strangers being able to contact children on Instagram, the sexualization of minors on that platform, and the dangers of its “people you may know” feature that recommends connections between adults and children.

But Meta dragged its feet when it came to addressing the issues, the passages show.

Instagram, for instance, began restricting adults’ ability to message minors in 2021. One internal document referenced in the lawsuit shows Meta “scrambling in 2020 to address an Apple executive whose 12-year-old was solicited on the platform, noting ‘this is the kind of thing that pisses Apple off to the extent of threatening to remove us from the App Store.'”

According to the complaint, Meta “knew that adults soliciting minors was a problem on the platform, and was willing to treat it as an urgent problem when it had to.”

In a statement, Meta said it wants teens to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online and has spent “a decade working on these issues and hiring people who have dedicated their careers to keeping young people safe and supported online. The complaint mischaracterizes our work using selective quotes and cherry-picked documents.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell and dozens of counterparts from other states also filed suit against the Facebook and Instagram parent company in the fall, alleging “unfair and deceptive practices that harm young people.”

At the time, Campbell’s office said Meta “knew of the significant harm” its practices, which they allege includes designing the applications to “addict young users… and chose to hide its knowledge and mislead the public to make a profit.”

The California-based company said it uses sophisticated technology, hires child safety experts, reports content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and shares information and tools with other companies and law enforcement, including state attorneys general, to help root out predators.

Last week, Meta announced it will start hiding inappropriate content from teenagers’ accounts on Instagram and Facebook, including posts about suicide, self-harm and eating disorders.

Documents were unredacted in New Mexico a day after the company shared a proposed framework for “clear, consistent” federal legislation that officials said is aimed at making it simpler for parents to oversee their teens’ online lives.

Meta is calling on lawmakers to form laws that would require parental approval for teens under 16 to download all apps in the app store and companies to “develop consistent age appropriate content standards across the apps teens use.”

In a conversation with the Herald, Nicole Lopez, the company’s global director of youth safety policy, said an influx of states are passing a “patchwork of different laws” that require teens to get parent approval to use certain apps.

“What’s happening is that social media laws are holding different platforms to different standards in different states,” Lopez said. “It ultimately leaves teens with inconsistent online experiences.”

“We believe the best way to help support parents and teens is a simple industry-wide solution where all apps are held to the same consistent standard,” she added. “Whether you’re a parent or policymaker, everyone can agree that it would make it simpler for parents to oversee their teen’s online lives.”

Sen. Ed Markey, responding to Meta’s call for federal standards, said he agreed it was time for Congress to act.

“Big Tech is knowingly fueling a youth mental health crisis and children’s privacy crisis—all to make a pretty penny,” he said in a statement to the Herald.  “Self-regulation has failed. It’s time for Congress to step in so that Big Tech can no longer put profit over people.”

Herald reporter Lance Reynolds and the Associated Press contributed to this report