On October 1, 2024, investigative journalist Jeff Horwitz reported a startling statistic from an internal Snap Inc. email quoted in a court case against Snap Inc., the company which owns Snapchat. The email noted that the company receives around 10,000 reports of sextortion each month—and that figure is likely “only a fraction of the total abuse occurring on the platform.”
This statistic prompted us to investigate what else Snap Inc. knows or believes about the impact of its product on users, particularly teens (We estimate that roughly 13 million American 13-17 year-olds use Snapchat). Over the past several months, we have examined multiple court cases filed against Snap Inc., many involving severe or fatal harm that was (allegedly) facilitated by Snapchat’s features. From 2022 through 2025, as part of the Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) and Judicial Council Coordinated Proceedings (JCCP) against social media defendants, more than 6001 such lawsuits specifically named Snap Inc. as a defendant. In addition, state attorneys general from Nevada and New Mexico have brought significant cases against the company—two cases which we will draw heavily from in this post.
Following the format of our previous post about the “industrial scale harms” attributed to TikTok, this piece presents dozens of quotations from internal reports, studies, memos, conversations, and public statements in which Snap executives, employees, and consultants acknowledge and discuss the harms that Snapchat causes to many minors who use their platform. We group these findings into five key clusters of harms:
Addictive, Compulsive, and Problematic Use
Drugs and Guns
Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), Sextortion, and In-person Sexual Predation and Assault
Cyberbullying
Knowledge of Harm and Underage Use, and Lack of Action
Similar to TikTok, we show that company insiders were aware of multiple widespread and serious harms, and in many cases did not act promptly or make substantial changes. As Snap’s director of security engineering said regarding Android users who are selling drugs or child sexual abuse material on Snap:
“That’s fine it’s been broken for ten years we can tolerate tonight.”2
With regard to sextortion on the platform, one employee had complained in a private channel:
“God I’m so pissed that were over-run by this sextortion shit right now. We’ve twiddled our thumbs and wrung our hands all f…ing year.”3
The briefs allege that the company is also aware of rampant underage use, and of the ineffectiveness of their age gating process. Snap executives have admitted that Snapchat’s age verification system
“Is effectively useless in stopping underage users from signing up to the Snapchat app.”4
Although the evidence below is all publicly available, no one has compiled and combined direct quotations from company insiders and internal reports across multiple alleged harms. We think this compilation gives vital information to parents, who might want some insight into the business practices of a company that hosts their children’s social lives, owns much of their attention, and influences their social development.
At the start of each section, we highlight a real-life example—drawn from relevant court documents—illustrating the specific harm in question. Each child’s story offers a human perspective on the broader statistics and quotations that reveal the far-reaching harms discussed within the company. ...
People with Obesity are getting the shaft from the FDA. That’s got to change.
It is likely to come as a surprise that, considering all the attention and headlines about the America’s obesity epidemic and GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, Zepbound, and Mounjaro, that the FDA does not routinely update drug labels with safety information for people with obesity. The agency that Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman once accused as being “obsessed with safety” doesn’t know (and it seems doesn’t care) if people with obesity are dosed safely or effectively with approved products since large scale clinical trials regularly and purposely exclude them -- per clinical trial designs approved by the FDA.
Such scientific omission is irrational, unscientific, not in the best interests of patients, contrary to the wishes of the medical profession – and just plain wrong.
Consider the evidence:
Per a 2024 study in Clinical Pharmacokinetics, "Optimal clinical decision making in patients with obesity is impossible without prior study of drug of interest in this population."
The FDA has some explaining to do. The big unanswered question is why neither drug developers nor the FDA have acted on this recognized and solvable public health blind spot.
The FDA’s newly minted Commissioner, Dr. Martin Makary, needs to ask his staff two very direct questions::
Why does the agency require labels to include hepatic impairment pharmacokinetic information, but not information for patients with obesity -- since the population of people with hepatic impairments is a twentieth the size of people with obesity.
According to Harvard researchers, serious gaps exist in what is known about the effects of obesity on drug disposition and current label information on drug use. Why it acceptable for these gaps continue to exist within the universe of FDA-approved medicines and, more importantly, why do they continue to exist unexamined and uncorrected?
The Commissioner should ask his staff for a list of drugs whose labels have been updated to reflect the pharmacokinetics of people with obesity and ask for an explanation as to why the drugs referenced in the Harvard study are not amongst them.
Obesity is not a rare or orphan disease. But that shouldn’t mean the agency can ignore a condition that impacts nearly 100 million adult Americans. It is both shocking and disappointing that the FDA hasn’t acted with more urgency to proactively remediate drug labels so that physicians can be aware of both the problem and the solution. What makes matter worse it that it’s an easy regulatory fix. The FDA must put equal weight behind what happens post-approval, as it does in addressing the much more controlled premarket clinical trial environment. This also raises important questions relative to the current strengths and weaknesses of the agency’s post-market surveillance programs. Dr. Makary should insist that the agency he now leads augment transparency and clarity through more clear and comprehensive labeling updates.
Now is the time to rectify this serious oversight, prove to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that the agency isn’t an industry “sock puppet,” and help advance the health of a population that represents 40% of the United States population. To continue to ignore this problem is regulatory malpractice of the first order.
Remember when your family doctor was actually your doctor? That quaint historical period when physicians made independent medical judgments instead of reading from pharmaceutical scripts? When they looked at you as a unique human being rather than a collection of compliance metrics needing correction?
Those days are gone.
Today’s primary care physician is something entirely different—a pharmaceutical compliance officer with a prescription pad, a corporate protocol to follow, and overlords tracking their every move. They’ve transitioned from healers to hustlers, from medical professionals to medication pushers, from trusted advisors to glorified drug dealers with better parking.
I recently had a conversation with a pediatrician that exposed the naked truth of modern medicine. He confessed to me—with a mixture of resignation and discomfort—that he was “mandated” to administer the PHQ-9A (depression screening) to every adolescent, and if they scored above a certain threshold, he MUST offer an SSRI antidepressant.
“What if the teen is just going through a breakup or having normal adolescent mood swings?” I asked.
He shrugged helplessly. “Doesn’t matter. If they hit the number on the screening, protocol says I have to offer medication.”
“But you know these drugs more than double the risk of suicidal events in teenagers,” I pressed. “The black box warning exists for a reason.”
His response chilled me: “If something happened to the teen and I didn’t follow protocol—if I didn’t offer the medication—I could be held liable. My hands are tied.”
And there it was—the perfect analogy hiding in plain sight. This highly educated physician with years of training wasn’t making independent medical decisions. He was a street-level drug dealer who feared what would happen if he didn’t move enough product for his overlords. The corner pusher fears his supplier’s enforcers; the modern physician fears “liability” and “protocol violations.” Different vocabulary, identical dynamic.
Primary care has been transformed from a healing profession into a pharmaceutical distribution network with doctors serving as glorified vending machines in white coats. They’re the street-level dealers in the medical-industrial complex, pushing products with the ruthless efficiency of a cartel but with better branding and tax benefits.
The parallels between how primary care physicians push psychiatric drugs and vaccines are so perfect they deserve admiration from a purely marketing perspective. It’s the same hustle with different packaging—one comes in pill form, the other in a needle, but the script is identical.
The SSRI Hustle
God forbid you or a family member is unfortunate enough to schedule a routine checkup during a particularly bad week. Walk into that sterile exam room while grieving a loss, stressing about work, or just experiencing one of life’s inevitable rough patches, and you’ll walk out with a ‘mild to moderate depression’ diagnosis faster than you can say ‘pharmaceutical kickback.
Within minutes, you’re handed a questionnaire with loaded questions like: “Feeling bad about yourself or that you have let yourself or your family down or that you are a failure?” (You just watched your ex’s vacation photos on Instagram while eating ice cream for dinner in your unwashed sweatpants, so… is this a trick question?)
Answer honestly, and congratulations! You’ve just self-diagnosed with “mild to moderate depression.”
You mean what we used to call sad?
Your doctor spends approximately 90 seconds validating this with probing questions like “And how long have you felt this way?” before reaching for the prescription pad.
“I think Lexapro would really help take the edge off,” they say with practiced compassion, already halfway through writing the prescription. “It will balance your brain chemicals.”
But it’s when you express hesitation that the real sales pitch begins—fear. This is where doctors transform into pharmaceutical fear merchants:
“You know, untreated depression can be very serious,” they warn ominously. “It can worsen over time. It can affect your relationships, your work, your entire life. Depression is a serious medical condition—in fact, it’s the leading cause of disability worldwide.”
The implication hangs in the air like a guillotine blade: refuse this medication, and you’re gambling with your life. They may even pull out the suicide card: “Depression can lead to suicidal thoughts if left untreated.” The cosmic irony of using suicide as a scare tactic to prescribe drugs with black box warnings about increasing suicidal ideation seems lost on them.
For teenagers, the fear tactics are directed at parents. “You don’t want to take chances with your child’s mental health, do you?” they ask, making parents feel like monsters for questioning whether their teen’s temporary sadness requires a medication that doubles their risk of suicidal events.
This isn’t medical counseling. It’s emotional manipulation through fear—the same tactic used by predatory salespeople in every industry. “Better safe than sorry” becomes the catch-all dismissal of legitimate concerns about medications with profound risks and modest benefits.
What they don’t mention:
The “chemical imbalance” theory of depression was thoroughly debunked years ago, joining phrenology and bloodletting in medicine’s hall of shame. SSRIs have never proven to be clinically meaningful beyond placebo.
Complying with their prescription pad evangelism could result in permanent sexual dysfunction—as in forever, as in the rest of your life.
Withdrawal can be so brutal and protracted that patients often mistake it for “proof they need the medication” rather than recognizing it as drug dependence.
And here’s the cosmic punchline: in the 4-6 weeks it takes for these medications to supposedly “work,” most situational “depression” would have naturally improved anyway.
When that happens?
The doctor smugly nods and thinks, “See, the drugs I prescribed fixed them!” Never mind that time, human resilience, and your own natural healing did all the heavy lifting while the medication was just along for the expensive, side-effect-laden ride.
The Vaccine Hustle
Now let’s watch the vaccine version of the same performance:
You visit for a completely unrelated issue—perhaps a sprained ankle or a skin rash. Before addressing your actual concern, your doctor casually mentions, “I see you haven’t had your Covid or flu shot this year.”
The framing is already perfect—you’re “behind” on something, implying non-compliance with an expected standard. Your medical record has been flagged for a deficiency that needs correcting, like a car overdue for an oil change.
Express hesitation, and witness the same script unfold: “These vaccines are very safe and effective. Side effects are usually just a sore arm or mild fatigue for a day.” (Myocarditis? Menstrual disruptions? Neurological issues, complete hijacking of my immune system? Those are so rare they’re not worth mentioning, apparently.)
Ask about actual risk reduction—like how the flu vaccine isn’t efficacious and doesn’t prevent you from contracting the flu—and watch them shift uncomfortably.
Dare to question whether a perfectly healthy 17-year-old who already recovered from Covid needs an experimental mRNA intervention that doesn’t prevent transmission—and has now been shown to actually INCREASE susceptibility to infection over time, not to mention the myocarditis risks, menstrual disruptions, and other “rare” side effects conveniently minimized in the sales pitch—and watch their face transform before your eyes.
First comes the reflexive smile-cramp, that frozen rictus of medical authority being questioned. Then the slightly widened eyes as they process your heretical departure from the script. Finally, that subtle hardening around the jaw as they shift from healthcare provider to pharmaceutical enforcement officer.
It’s like watching someone toggle between “friendly neighborhood doctor” and “Covid compliance commissar” in real-time, all because you had the audacity to weigh risks against benefits for your own child.
But regardless of whether they’re pushing pills or jabs, we see the identical sales pitch every time—a masterclass in pharmaceutical propaganda. They dramatically exaggerate even the most microscopic potential benefits while feverishly minimizing, dismissing, or flat-out denying any risks with the practiced ease of a seasoned con artist. Watch them transform a 1% absolute risk reduction into ‘90% effective!’ while simultaneously downgrading ‘known serious adverse events’ to ‘extremely rare side effects that aren’t worth discussing.’ It’s as if they’ve never read a single page of the actual scientific literature on the subject.
Spoiler alert: they haven’t.
Most haven’t ventured beyond industry-funded continuing education modules and pharmaceutical company press releases since medical school. The journal articles gathering dust in their mental libraries are pharmaceutical marketing materials disguised as science, cherry-picked data points that support the sales pitch while burying inconvenient truths beneath statistical sleight-of-hand. Their ‘expertise’ is just regurgitated talking points from the last drug rep who bought them lunch.
Your Doctor Now Reports to Corporate Masters
The corporate takeover of medicine didn’t happen overnight—it was systematically engineered, with the Affordable Care Act delivering the knockout blow to independent practice. While marketed as expanding “healthcare access,” Obamacare buried small practices under an avalanche of regulatory requirements, EHR mandates, and compliance costs that made independence financially impossible.
Before the ACA, over half of physicians owned their practices; today, that number has plummeted below 30%. The rest were forced to sell out to corporate healthcare systems where their compensation and job security now depend on following protocols—including pharmaceutical prescribing patterns and vaccination targets—established by administrators who’ve never touched a stethoscope.
Your family doctor didn’t willingly transform into a pharmaceutical enforcement agent; they were legislated into compliance, their medical autonomy sacrificed on the altar of corporatized healthcare while maintaining the illusion of independent judgment.
Primary care healthcare professionals are now following protocol with the unquestioning obedience of a first-grader desperate for a gold star sticker. It makes you wonder how many who flock to primary care medicine were those perfect little rule-followers their entire lives—the ones who color-coded their highlighters in medical school, memorized every algorithm without asking why, and spent their formative years as professional hoop-jumpers. The straight-A students who never risked a teacher’s disapproval, never colored outside the lines, never questioned authority figures even when those figures were demonstrably wrong. The ones whose entire identity became wrapped up in following instructions perfectly to achieve the next credential, the next white coat, the next professional validation.
Is it any surprise that these same personalities now cling to protocols like religious scripture, unable to exercise independent clinical judgment when a human being’s complex situation doesn’t fit neatly into their laminated flowchart? Critical thinking requires the courage to ask uncomfortable questions—a skill that was systematically extinguished in these pristine academic specimens long before they wrote their first prescription
Next time your primary care physician tries to prescribe you an SSRI for being human or jab you with the latest pharmaceutical subscription service, remember: you’re not a patient—you’re a customer they’re trying to upsell.
Their script may be polished, but your bullshit detector doesn’t need a medical degree to function properly. Ask the uncomfortable questions they’re afraid to answer. Demand actual data, not rehearsed talking points. Walk out if necessary.
Find the rare physicians who still practice medicine instead of pharmaceutical compliance. And if your doctor looks horrified when you decline their latest pill or shot, smile sweetly and say, “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure my chart notes that YOU failed to convince ME—not the other way around.”
After all, the most rebellious act in modern healthcare isn’t refusing treatment—it’s insisting on informed consent in a system designed to eliminate it.
Your body, your mind, your choice. No prescription required.
Dr. Roger McFillin, the provocative voice behind the Radically Genuine Podcast, is a Clinical Psychologist with over two decades of experience.
There is no rule that says universities have to accept public funds and some do not. But, if you accept public funding, then the federal government can make you do things. Those can be big things like title IX, but also small things. There are dozens of federal rules that must be met to receive funds. I am told some of the stupid annual modules I do are to sate these rules.
The Trump administration wants universities to do some things. Ban masks so protesters can be identified. Note: there is no evidence that community masking improves any health outcome based on high quality data. End DEI. Use merit to govern admissions and many other things. Right now, universities are squirming. Harvard claims it will #resist. But they are borrowing cash and will soon be crippled if they do not capitulate. I think Alan Garber is smart enough to know this.
Let us be clear. This is not censorship. Harvard can give up federal funds and stop admitting whites and asians and men, and only admit under represented minorities. It can violate title IX, and commit fully to DEI. But as long as it chooses to accept public funding, it must follow the rules of the federal government, which are numerous. Trump is adding to these rules in an effort to make universities less woke.
The American people voted for this. They are sick of faculty being cancelled for saying “pregnant women” not “pregnant persons”. They think “people with uteri” is Orwellian. It's women. Why do unis hire someone to review slides to police for these words? (They do!)
They don't want Harvard to admit students who need to take remedial math (Google it), but rather the best. Universities meanwhile want to fire faculty who supported school reopening. If a faculty member opposed cloth masking 2 year olds, universities worked to punish that view, stripping them of teaching duties. In other words, universities are completely lost: veritas is replaced with left wing partisanship.
They also won't fix themselves. They don't admit error. They keep lying about lockdown and masks and school closure and gender medicine, etc. They have hired so many deranged left wing faculty to the point that the avg university professor makes AOC look conservative. Enter Trump: with the mandate of the people, he seeks to punish universities.
He is just getting started. First he threatens Harvard 9 billion in funding. He stops 2 billion. They fund raise 1 million, so they are only minus 1999 million. Next he threatens their tax exempt status. Next his DOE asks for a list of all foreign donors. Harvard does not want this. They will soon find unimaginable dirt. If Trump's IRS kills the tax exemption Harvard is game over. And Trump can do so much more. He can run Harvard into the ground. Harvard has no leverage on him. Trump can wipe Harvard from the face of the earth.
Some say Democrats would never do this. That is because they don't have to. When Biden wanted Universities to fire workers who didn't get a covid shot, he didn't threaten their funding. That's true. He just called and asked. Biden’s admin used soft power to make Universities their puppet. He fired nurses who got COVID on the job. Only a fucking moron would do that. Universities happily complied. That's because universities just do whatever Democrats ask for. That's how deep the bias is.
I think if a university takes federal funding, the average faculty should be close to the average American. Some faculty should be conservative, and some liberal, and the average should be centrist. At a minimum, universities should not punish faculty with views that align with conservatives. That's not the case.
And until it is, Trump should use all his powers to crush universities. He has no alternative. And Harvard has no public support. The average American thinks they have their head up their ass. The average American is right. Universities are a Democrat think tank. So why should tax payers fund them?
Does the First Amendment give parents a right to opt out of gender ideology at the local public elementary school? The Supreme Court will consider that Tuesday inMahmoud v. Taylor, and what a sign of the times. Consider two of the storybooks that parents in Montgomery County, Md., say the district added to its reading curriculum:
“My Rainbow”is about an autistic child named Trinity who says, “Ineed long hair,” because, “I’m a transgender girl.” It ends with a surprise gift from Trinity’s mother: a teal, pink, and purple wig.
“Born Ready” is about Penelope, who tells her mother: “I don’t feel like a boy. I AM a boy.” After this single discussion, the mother answers with unquestioning affirmation: “Yes. We will make a plan to tell everyone we love.”
Teachers in Montgomery County were also given guidance on replying to classroom questions and comments. One idea was to “disrupt” students from “either/or thinking” about the sexes. If a child suggested it’s “weird” to say a girl can become a boy, the proposed response was to explain how this comment is “hurtful,” and that when each of us is born, “people make a guess about our gender.”
Many families objected, including the Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox plaintiffs. In their telling of the facts, they initially were offered a chance to opt out of the storybooks. But the school district quickly reversed and then said it wouldn’t inform parents when the books were going to be read.
Montgomery County replies that it sought to supplement its reading program with LGBTQ characters to “reflect the diversity” of its families. At first it “tried to accommodate parent requests to opt their children out of class,” until that “became unworkably disruptive,” because of “unsustainably high numbers of absent students.” For the record, “My Rainbow” has since been removed, though the county doesn’t explain exactly why.
The parents rely on the precedent Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), in which the Court said Amish families couldn’t be made to send their children to school past eighth grade. If the First Amendment protects dropping out, how can it not cover a “much narrower request” by parents wanting merely to skip “discrete instruction that deliberately seeks to confound their religious values”?
Montgomery County argues that if families choose to attend public schools, they “are not cognizably coerced by virtue of their children’s exposure there to religiously objectionable ideas.” If the First Amendment gives parents a right to pick and choose from the curriculum, the county says there’s “no discernible limit,” and it would work the same in science or history classes. Public schools “simply cannot accommodate” such exceptions.
They can’t? Public schools accommodate a lot, including students who are disabled or learning English as a second language. Part of living in a pluralistic society is that some families might reject, say, ideas on evolution. Their children can still benefit from learning algebra and “Romeo and Juliet.” How hard would it be for Montgomery County schools to announce that “Born Ready” will be read in three weeks, and students can be excused?
This gets to the parents’ second argument, which is that the district’s policy isn’t neutral, and the ending of opt outs was targeted. Their brief cites a member of the school board saying it’d be an impossible disruption if teachers had to “send out notices so white supremacists could opt out of civil-rights content.” The implicit comparison is between religious families and racists. Who needs a tolerance lesson?
