Privateness and digital rights advocates are elevating alarms over a law that many would anticipate them to cheer: a federal crackdown on revenge porn and AI-generated deepfakes.
The newly signed Take It Down Act makes it unlawful to publish nonconsensual express pictures — actual or AI-generated — and offers platforms simply 48 hours to adjust to a sufferer’s takedown request or face legal responsibility. Whereas extensively praised as a long-overdue win for victims, experts have additionally warned its imprecise language, lax requirements for verifying claims, and tight compliance window may pave the best way for overreach, censorship of legit content material, and even surveillance.
“Content material moderation at scale is extensively problematic and all the time finally ends up with essential and crucial speech being censored,” India McKinney, director of federal affairs at Digital Frontier Basis, a digital rights group, informed TechCrunch.
On-line platforms have one 12 months to determine a course of for eradicating nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII). Whereas the law requires takedown requests come from victims or their representatives, it solely asks for a bodily or digital signature — no photograph ID or different type of verification is required. That probably goals to scale back obstacles for victims, nevertheless it may create a possibility for abuse.
“I actually need to be incorrect about this, however I feel there are going to be extra requests to take down pictures depicting queer and trans folks in relationships, and much more than that, I feel it’s gonna be consensual porn,” McKinney mentioned.
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a co-sponsor of the Take It Down Act, additionally sponsored the Youngsters On-line Security Act which places the onus on platforms to guard kids from dangerous content material on-line. Blackburn has mentioned she believes content related to transgender people is dangerous to children. Equally, the Heritage Basis — the conservative suppose tank behind Undertaking 2025 — has additionally said that “protecting trans content material away from kids is defending children.”
Due to the legal responsibility that platforms face in the event that they don’t take down a picture inside 48 hours of receiving a request, “the default goes to be that they simply take it down with out doing any investigation to see if this really is NCII or if it’s one other kind of protected speech, or if it’s even related to the one who’s making the request,” mentioned McKinney.
Snapchat and Meta have each mentioned they’re supportive of the law, however neither responded to TechCrunch’s requests for extra details about how they’ll confirm whether or not the individual requesting a takedown is a sufferer.
Mastodon, a decentralized platform that hosts its personal flagship server that others can be part of, informed TechCrunch it will lean in direction of elimination if it was too troublesome to confirm the sufferer.
Mastodon and different decentralized platforms like Bluesky or Pixelfed could also be particularly weak to the chilling impact of the 48-hour takedown rule. These networks depend on independently operated servers, usually run by nonprofits or people. Underneath the law, the FTC can deal with any platform that doesn’t “moderately comply” with takedown calls for as committing an “unfair or misleading act or apply” – even when the host isn’t a industrial entity.
“That is troubling on its face, however it’s significantly so at a second when the chair of the FTC has taken unprecedented steps to politicize the company and has explicitly promised to make use of the ability of the company to punish platforms and companies on an ideological, versus principled, foundation,” the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit devoted to ending revenge porn, mentioned in a statement.
Proactive monitoring
McKinney predicts that platforms will begin moderating content material earlier than it’s disseminated in order that they have fewer problematic posts to take down sooner or later.
Platforms are already utilizing AI to observe for dangerous content material.
Kevin Guo, CEO and co-founder of AI-generated content material detection startup Hive, mentioned his firm works with on-line platforms to detect deepfakes and youngster sexual abuse materials (CSAM). A few of Hive’s prospects embrace Reddit, Giphy, Vevo, Bluesky, and BeReal.
“We had been really one of many tech firms that endorsed that invoice,” Guo informed TechCrunch. “It’ll assist clear up some fairly essential issues and compel these platforms to undertake options extra proactively.”
Hive’s mannequin is a software-as-a-service, so the startup doesn’t management how platforms use its product to flag or take away content material. However Guo mentioned many purchasers insert Hive’s API on the level of add to observe earlier than something is shipped out to the neighborhood.
A Reddit spokesperson informed TechCrunch the platform makes use of “subtle inside instruments, processes, and groups to deal with and take away” NCII. Reddit additionally companions with nonprofit SWGfl to deploy its StopNCII device, which scans reside site visitors for matches in opposition to a database of identified NCII and removes correct matches. The corporate didn’t share how it will make sure the individual requesting the takedown is the sufferer.
McKinney warns this sort of monitoring may prolong into encrypted messages sooner or later. Whereas the law focuses on public or semi-public dissemination, it additionally requires platforms to “take away and make affordable efforts to stop the reupload” of nonconsensual intimate pictures. She argues this might incentivize proactive scanning of all content material, even in encrypted areas. The law doesn’t embrace any carve outs for end-to-end encrypted messaging companies like WhatsApp, Sign, or iMessage.
Meta, Sign, and Apple haven’t responded to TechCrunch’s request for extra info on their plans for encrypted messaging.
Broader free speech implications
On March 4, Trump delivered a joint handle to Congress through which he praised the Take It Down Act and mentioned he appeared ahead to signing it into law.
“And I’m going to make use of that invoice for myself, too, should you don’t thoughts,” he added. “There’s no person who will get handled worse than I do on-line.”
Whereas the viewers laughed on the remark, not everybody took it as a joke. Trump hasn’t been shy about suppressing or retaliating in opposition to unfavorable speech, whether or not that’s labeling mainstream media retailers “enemies of the people,” barring The Associated Press from the Oval Workplace regardless of a court docket order, or pulling funding from NPR and PBS.
On Thursday, the Trump administration barred Harvard University from accepting international scholar admissions, escalating a battle that started after Harvard refused to stick to Trump’s calls for that it make modifications to its curriculum and get rid of DEI-related content material, amongst different issues. In retaliation, Trump has frozen federal funding to Harvard and threatened to revoke the college’s tax-exempt standing.
“At a time after we’re already seeing faculty boards attempt to ban books and we’re seeing sure politicians be very explicitly in regards to the forms of content material they don’t need folks to ever see, whether or not it’s vital race idea or abortion info or details about local weather change…it’s deeply uncomfortable for us with our previous work on content material moderation to see members of each events brazenly advocating for content material moderation at this scale,” McKinney mentioned.
