President Donald Trump is about to signal the Take It Down Act as we speak, in accordance with CNN. The act is a chunk of bipartisan laws that criminalizes the publication of “nonconsensual intimate visible depictions,” together with AI deepfakes. The legislation made it by the US Home of Representatives in April 2025, prompting concern from free speech advocates that consider components of the legislation could possibly be simply abused to curtail speech.
The Take It Down Act was created to deal with the unfold of nonconsensual, sexually exploitative photographs on-line. Legal guidelines exist addressing the problem on the state stage, and a few on-line platforms have already got strategies for requesting a nonconsensual picture or video be taken down. This new legislation would set a federal customary, although, making taking down posts necessary and directing firms to create a system for requesting photographs or movies be eliminated, underneath the supervision of the Federal Commerce Fee.
The problem with the legislation as written, in accordance with the Digital Frontier Basis, is that its takedown provision “applies to a wider class of content material…than the narrower NCII [nonconsensual intimate image] definitions discovered elsewhere within the invoice.” The EFF additionally means that the brief time frame of 48 hours that the Take It Down Act requires signifies that smaller on-line platforms will in all probability simply take away posts after they obtain a grievance somewhat than confirm that the publish really violates the legislation.
Trump has expressed curiosity in profiting from the brand new legislation, as effectively. “I’m going to make use of that invoice for myself, too, in the event you don’t thoughts. There’s no one will get handled worse than I do on-line. No one,” Trump mentioned throughout a joint session of Congress in March. Given the lopsided composition of the present FTC and the Trump administration’s already unfastened interpretation of current legal guidelines, it isn’t arduous to think about how the unique intentions of the Take It Down Act could possibly be twisted.
