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Some of the biggest tech companies will now be held accountable for failing to act quickly when asked to remove non-consensual intimate images and videos.
The Take It Down Act, signed by President Trump last year, went into effect on May 19. It gives victims of "revenge porn" a clear process to get non-consensual images and videos scrubbed from the internet as quickly as possible.
The law criminalizes the sharing of any non-consensual, sexually explicit material involving an adult, as well as any intimate content involving a minor. It also includes any AI-generated or manipulated imagery of your likeness.
Enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the government agency is not directly responsible for image removal. Instead, social media services, messaging apps, and websites must act on removal requests within 48 hours of receiving a report. Failure to do so could result in civil penalties of $53,088 per report.
How to Request Nonconsensual Sexual Imagery Removal
To start the process, you must ask the host to remove videos or images. You should contact the platform's support team as soon as possible. Many popular services now offer various ways to do so, including dedicated forms within support centers. Wired confirmed that LinkedIn, Reddit, Snap, and others allow you to use existing reporting tools to report this type of content.
For example, on social media network X, you can report a post by pressing on the three-dot menu and selecting Report post > Private or Non-Consensual Content > Sharing a photo/video of me that I do not want on the platform. You then need to fill in another form stating who is included in the content.
If a provider does not remove the content within 48 hours, you can file a complaint directly with the FTC on this website. You won't hear back from the FTC, and it doesn't necessarily take action on each individual report. This isn't a way to apply pressure per case; instead, the FTC uses reports to build cases against each provider if they fail to remove content regularly.
This may prove frustrating as you attempt to remove your own content. However, if you report a provider who hasn't followed content removal rules, it will give the FTC more evidence should it build a case against them.
In the meantime, you can find other tools on the FTC website to help stop the spread of photos and videos, including those from a charity called Stop Non-Consensual Intimate Image Abuse. You can also report the perpetrators directly to the FBI if you know who they are.
Critics of the Take It Down law fear it could be misused by the FTC. When the legislation was being considered by Congress, the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI) said, "This is an alarming expansion of the FTC's enforcement authority, especially under an administration that has openly expressed hostility to nonprofit organizations that do not serve its political interests.
"Platforms that feel confident that they are unlikely to be targeted by the FTC (for example, platforms that are closely aligned with the current administration) may feel emboldened to simply ignore reports of NDII [nonconsensual distribution of intimate images]," it added.