The Take It Down Act isn’t a law, it’s a weapon
It’s internet safety law season again. After a narrow failure to pass the Kids Online Safety Act in 2024, Congress is now advancing the Take It Down Act, which criminalizes nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII, once dubbed “revenge porn,” including AI-generated content) and sets requirements for web platforms to remove it. The bill has gained support from First Lady Melania Trump, and President Donald Trump touted it during his joint address to Congress on March 4th, promising he would sign it. In a normal world, this could be a positive step towards solving the real problem of NCII, a problem that AI is making worse.
But we are not in a normal world. Parts of the Take It Down Act are more likely to become a sword for a corrupt presidential administration than a shield to protect NCII victims â and supporters of both civil liberties and Big Tech accountability should recognize it.
The typical discourse around a bill like the Take It Down Act works this way: lawmakers propose a rule that’s supposed to do a good and popular thing, like help victims of nonconsensual sexual images get those images taken down. Civil liberties advocates go “wait a minute, this has a lot of bad side …