Forida’s chief financial officer demanded Friday that social media companies be held accountable for creating disappearing messages that handicap child sex trafficking investigations.
Blaise Ingoglia, a Spring Hill Republican and former state senator, accused social media platforms of “destroying evidence” of messages between groomers and minors by installing instant vanishing features across platforms. His comments came Friday, amid a broader legal battle waged by Florida officials trying to impose age restrictions on social media companies.
“A lot of these tech companies are in this state of de facto protecting these predators,” Ingoglia said during a Winter Haven press conference, speaking alongside Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, adding that a case that should be a “slam dunk” for law enforcement is stopped by vanishing messages.
“These social media companies need to be held accountable for destroying vital evidence that law enforcement needs to put these predators in prison,” he told The Florida Phoenix in a phone call later. “It’s severely hindering and handicapping their efforts.”
Ingoglia, appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis as CFO in July, had sponsored a bill during the 2025 session that would have required social media companies to decrypt messages if subpoenaed by a court, and would have prohibited minors from having access to disappearing messages. The measure failed, despite passing the Senate.
This isn’t Florida’s only venture into targeting the social media world. The predominantly GOP-led Legislature in 2024 passed a law banning social media companies from allowing children under 15 years old to create accounts, sparking a massive legal battle between state officials and two trade associations representing social media giants. The law was blocked by an appellate court over the summer, but the case remains pending.
Earlier this year, Uthmeier filed a lawsuit against Snapchat, a social media platform allowing users to send each other photos and messages that can vanish instantly after viewing. He heralded the April case as just the beginning of his continued crackdown on social media platforms, building off of a separate investigation into the gaming platform Roblox.
Other platforms that allow for encrypted messages include Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal.
As a lawmaker, Ingoglia also sponsored a new law funding a grant for law enforcement to ramp up online sting operations to capture and imprison child predators. During Friday’s press conference, which announced 246 arrests of human traffickers, child predators, and prostitutes in just seven days, Ingoglia added that parents need to become aware of the “depravity” of online predators.
“You have no idea of the depravity that is waiting to take advantage, take hold of them, abuse them, and turn their lives upside down,” he said. “Social media companies should stop the encryption of any message that has a minor account so law enforcement can have the proof they need to put these scumbags away for life.”
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