The Take It Down Act is heading to President Donald Trump’s desk after the Home voted 409-2 to cross the invoice, which would require social media corporations to take down content material flagged as nonconsensual (together with AI-generated) sexual photos. Trump has pledged to signal it.
The invoice is among the many solely items of on-line security laws to efficiently cross each chambers in years of furor over deepfakes, little one security, and different points — but it surely’s one which critics worry will likely be used as a weapon in opposition to content material the administration or its allies dislike. It criminalizes the publication of nonconsensual intimate photos (NCII), whether or not actual or computer-generated, and requires social media platforms to have a system to take away these photos inside 48 hours of being flagged. In his deal with to Congress this 12 months, Trump quipped that when he signed it, “I’m going to make use of that invoice for myself too, in the event you don’t thoughts, as a result of no person will get handled worse than I do on-line, no person.”
The proliferation of AI instruments that make it simpler than ever to generate realistic-looking photos has supercharged issues about deepfaked, damaging content material spreading via colleges and creating a brand new vector of bullying and abuse. However whereas critics say that’s an necessary subject to take care of, they fear that the Take It Down Act’s strategy might be exploited to inflict hurt in different methods.
The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), which was created to fight image-based sexual abuse, stated that it could possibly’t cheer the Take It Down Act’s passage. “Whereas we welcome the long-overdue federal criminalization of NDII [the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images], we remorse that it’s mixed with a takedown provision that’s extremely vulnerable to misuse and can possible be counter-productive for victims,” the group writes. It fears that the invoice, which empowers the Federal Commerce Fee — whose Democratic minority commissioners Trump fired in a break with many years of Supreme Courtroom precedent — will likely be selectively enforced in a approach that finally solely props up “unscrupulous platforms.”
“Platforms that really feel assured that they’re unlikely to be focused by the FTC (for instance, platforms which might be carefully aligned with the present administration) might really feel emboldened to easily ignore stories of NDII,” they write. “Platforms making an attempt to determine genuine complaints might encounter a sea of false stories that would overwhelm their efforts and jeopardize their potential to function in any respect.”
“Platforms might reply by abandoning encryption completely”
Due to the short turnaround for platforms to take away content material flagged as nonconsensual intimate imagery, the Digital Frontier Basis (EFF) warns that particularly smaller platforms “must comply so shortly to keep away from authorized threat that they gained’t be capable of confirm claims.” As an alternative, they’ll possible flip to flawed filters to crack down on duplicates, they write. The group additionally cautions that end-to-end encrypted providers together with non-public messaging techniques and cloud storage usually are not exempted from the invoice, posing a threat to the privateness know-how. Since encrypted providers can’t monitor what their customers ship to at least one one other, the EFF asks, “How might such providers adjust to the takedown requests mandated on this invoice? Platforms might reply by abandoning encryption completely so as to have the ability to monitor content material—turning non-public conversations into surveilled areas,” together with ones that abuse survivors generally flip to.
Even so, the Take It Down Act shortly garnered a large base of assist. First Girl Melania Trump has turn into a number one champion of the invoice, but it surely’s additionally seen backing from guardian and youth advocates, in addition to some within the tech business. Google’s president of worldwide affairs Kent Walker known as the passage “an enormous step towards defending people from nonconsensual specific imagery,” and Snap equally applauded the vote. Web Works, a bunch whose members embrace medium-sized corporations like Discord, Etsy, Reddit, Roblox, and others, praised the Home vote, with govt director Peter Chandler saying the invoice “would empower victims to take away NCII supplies from the Web and finish the cycle of victimization by those that publish this heinous content material.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), one in all two members (each Republican) who voted in opposition to the invoice, wrote on X that he couldn’t assist it as a result of “I really feel it is a slippery slope, ripe for abuse, with unintended penalties.”
