The Take It Down Act is heading to President Donald Trump’s desk after the Home voted 409-2 to move the invoice, which would require social media firms 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 move each chambers in years of furor over deepfakes, little one security, and different points — nevertheless it’s one which critics concern can be used as a weapon towards 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 tackle to Congress this yr, Trump quipped that once he signed it, “I’m going to make use of that invoice for myself too, when you don’t thoughts, as a result of no one will get handled worse than I do on-line, no one.”
The proliferation of AI instruments that make it simpler than ever to generate realistic-looking photos has supercharged considerations about deepfaked, damaging content material spreading through schools and creating a brand new vector of bullying and abuse. However whereas critics say that’s an vital difficulty to take care of, they fear that the Take It Down Act’s strategy may very well be exploited to inflict hurt in different methods.
The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), which was created to fight image-based sexual abuse, mentioned that it will 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 probably 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 Court docket precedent — can be selectively enforced in a approach that in the end solely props up “unscrupulous platforms.”
“Platforms that really feel assured that they’re unlikely to be focused by the FTC (for instance, platforms which can be carefully aligned with the present administration) could really feel emboldened to easily ignore experiences of NDII,” they write. “Platforms trying to establish genuine complaints could encounter a sea of false experiences that would overwhelm their efforts and jeopardize their potential to function in any respect.”
“Platforms could reply by abandoning encryption fully”
Due to the short turnaround for platforms to take away content material flagged as nonconsensual intimate imagery, the Digital Frontier Basis (EFF) warns that especially smaller platforms “should comply so shortly to keep away from authorized threat that they received’t have the ability to confirm claims.” As an alternative, they’ll probably flip to flawed filters to crack down on duplicates, they write. The group additionally cautions that end-to-end encrypted providers together with personal messaging programs and cloud storage aren’t exempted from the invoice, posing a threat to the privateness know-how. Since encrypted providers can’t monitor what their customers ship to 1 one other, the EFF asks, “How may such providers adjust to the takedown requests mandated on this invoice? Platforms could reply by abandoning encryption fully so as to have the ability to monitor content material—turning personal 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 develop into a number one champion of the invoice, nevertheless it’s additionally seen backing from mum or dad and youth advocates, in addition to some within the tech trade. Google’s president of worldwide affairs Kent Walker called the passage “a giant step towards defending people from nonconsensual specific imagery,” and Snap similarly applauded the vote. Web Works, a gaggle whose members embody medium-sized firms like Discord, Etsy, Reddit, Roblox, and others, praised the Home vote, with government 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), certainly one of two members (each Republican) who voted towards 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.”