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 firms to take down content material flagged as nonconsensual (together with AI-generated) sexual photographs. 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, youngster 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 photographs (NCII), whether or not actual or computer-generated, and requires social media platforms to have a system to take away these photographs inside 48 hours of being flagged. In his tackle to Congress this yr, Trump quipped that after he signed it, “I’m going to make use of that invoice for myself too, should 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 photographs has supercharged considerations about deepfaked, damaging content material spreading by means of colleges and creating a brand new vector of bullying and abuse. However whereas critics say that’s an necessary subject to cope with, they fear that the Take It Down Act’s method 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, stated that it may’t cheer the Take It Down Act’s passage. “Whereas we welcome the long-overdue federal criminalization of NDII (the nonconsensual distribution of intimate photographs), 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 means 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 are intently aligned with the present administration) could really feel emboldened to easily ignore stories of NDII,” they write. “Platforms trying to determine genuine complaints could encounter a sea of false stories that would overwhelm their efforts and jeopardize their capability to function in any respect.”
“Platforms could reply by abandoning encryption totally”
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 rapidly to keep away from authorized threat that they gained’t be capable 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 companies together with personal messaging techniques and cloud storage are usually not exempted from the invoice, posing a threat to the privateness expertise. Since encrypted companies can’t monitor what their customers ship to 1 one other, the EFF asks, “How may such companies adjust to the takedown requests mandated on this invoice? Platforms could reply by abandoning encryption totally 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 rapidly garnered a large base of assist. First Woman Melania Trump has grow to be a number one champion of the invoice, nevertheless it’s additionally seen backing from dad or mum and youth advocates, in addition to some within the tech trade. Google’s president of world affairs Kent Walker referred to as the passage “a giant step towards defending people from nonconsensual specific imagery,” and Snap equally applauded the vote. Web Works, a bunch whose members embrace medium-sized firms 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 every 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 this can be a slippery slope, ripe for abuse, with unintended penalties.”
