Starting on Tuesday, May 19, tech platforms have to provide a way for people to report nonconsensual intimate images and videos, or NCII, uploaded to their platforms. The new requirement is thanks to the Take It Down Act, a law backed by First Lady Melania Trump that passed last year with bipartisan support.
The Take It Down Act applies broadly to a range of apps and online services, including social media and gaming platforms, according to business guidance published by the Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible for enforcing platforms’ compliance with the law.
WIRED reached out to 14 companies that disclosed federal lobbying spending on the act to ask whether they believed they are subject to the law, and if so, how people could submit a takedown request.
Several company spokespeople were quick to say their companies supported the legislation, but they took additional time to explain how people could actually file a takedown request. One assured WIRED that their platform offered a secure reporting form, but did not provide a link to the form in question until after WIRED followed up multiple times. Two companies provided links to support pages that appear to have been updated after WIRED reached out. At least two host their forms on third-party websites, potentially making it difficult for people to search for the form themselves. Others said they did not plan on launching their reporting forms until the day the law went into effect. Companies were given a year between the passage of the act and the date it became enforceable to set up their takedown systems and develop request portals.
A spokesperson for T-Mobile said that the company supported the act, but that it doesn’t operate the types of online platforms the act applies to and that its core business is providing wireless and broadband services. (Broadband services are explicitly excluded in the act.)
Some companies did not respond to WIRED’s repeated outreach at all, including “First Buddy” Elon Musk’s X Corp., which garnered international scrutiny earlier this year after its AI chatbot Grok generated and posted thousands of nonconsensual images of women in various states of undress at users’ prompting. Proton AG and Verizon also did not respond.
The FTC did not respond to a request for comment. However, FTC guidelines say that platforms have to make it easy for people to submit removal requests. (Disclosure: The author of this story previously worked for the FTC.)
“The reporting piece of this is one of the most important pieces” of the Take It Down Act, says Jennifer King, a fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. “And it’s the thing that the companies I think often overlook.”
King points out that many people who might want to report nonconsensually shared nudes or deepfakes of themselves might be teenagers, who aren’t necessarily aware of their rights under the law or can easily understand the legalese written by compliance professionals included in these takedown request forms.
King says, “A lot of trouble with these types of reporting forms is that they don’t put any resources into testing them–they don’t test them with younger users, they probably don’t test them at all.”
How a Takedown Request Works
Regardless of the platform, the Take It Down Act has a few basic requirements for what information needs to be included in a takedown request, says James Grimmelmann, a law professor at the Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech.
At minimum, a takedown request has to include a way for the platform to locate the content, such as a link, and a statement explaining that it was not uploaded consensually. The request also has to include a signature either from the person depicted in the content or someone authorized to act on their behalf, and a way to contact that person.
Once someone submits a takedown request, a platform has up to 48 hours to determine whether it is valid. If it decides that it is, then it has to remove both the content reported and any identical copies.
Several larger platforms say they use an industry tool called StopNCII, which uses matching algorithms to identify abusive images and videos and is maintained by a British nonprofit. People can open cases directly on the tool’s website to add to what the tool flags. Reddit, TikTok, Snap, Microsoft Bing, and Meta’s social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are all listed as participants on the tool’s website.
Though many major platforms have dedicated forms to help guide the submission process, Alejandro Cuevas, a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy who studied the impact of initial passage of the law on deepfake communities, has observed that some sites only offer an email address for people to submit takedown requests.
Cuevas says in those cases, keeping good documentation, including links to the offending content, is especially important, because there’s a concern that if “submitters fail to just do one of these things, that would be a shield for the company potentially to not comply with the request or to delay it or to dilly dally.”
Meta
Cindy Southworth, Meta’s head of women safety, says in a statement that the company supported the act and that it has “already been compliant for several months.” Meta offers a help page that includes directions for submitting requests on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Meta AI.
Microsoft
To file a takedown request for some Microsoft products, including Bing Search and OneDrive, Microsoft has a form entitled “Report a Concern.” People first have to identify the service the content is on and share a link to it before identifying their “Concern type” as “Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery.”
Brad Smith, the vice chair and president of Microsoft, says in a statement that “President Trump’s signing of the Take It Down Act provides essential tools to prevent the misuse of technology and protect individuals from digital harm.”
Google (Including YouTube)
A Google spokesperson tells WIRED that the company endorsed the act and has been investing in policies and tools to stymy nonconsensual intimate imagery since 2015. Google has a dedicated takedown request form where people can submit up to 10 links at a time, and has a separate form where people can submit YouTube-specific takedown requests.
Reddit spokesperson Jen Molina says that Reddit was an early supporter of the Take It Down Act, and that it has “updated our systems to ensure full compliance with the Act’s specific requirements as they go into effect.”
Logged-in users can report individual posts, and Reddit is adding a reporting form to its website on May 19.
Snap
A Snap company spokesperson says in a statement to WIRED: “We’ve established processes for Snapchatters and other individuals to report this type of content. We continue to evolve these systems as part of our broader safety efforts, including investing in tools and technologies to proactively detect and take action on unwanted nudes and similar imagery shared without permission.”
The spokesperson shared a link to a help page that the company appears to have updated to include references to the act after WIRED’s outreach. Snap has a general “Report Account or Content” form where people can select either “They’re actually sharing my nudes/intimate imagery without my permission” or “They’re threatening to leak my nudes/intimate imagery without my permission” as a sub-option of the “They leaked/are threatening to leak my nudes or other intimate imagery (real or AI-generated)” option in the “Report the violation” dropdown.
A LinkedIn spokesperson says the platform has a “zero tolerance for nonconsensual intimate imagery.” Logged in users can file a request by clicking the three dots at the top right of any post and select the “Nonconsensual intimate imagery” option.
Starting May 19, the spokesperson adds, anyone, even people without accounts, will be able submit removal requests through a Help Center form, and that every report would be reviewed by a human.
TikTok
TikTok US spokesperson Mahsau Cullinane says that the company has a zero-tolerance policy for NCII abuse and was an early supporter of the Take It Down Act. People can make reports through a form that it also links to in its in-app reporting tool (which is accessible from every post through the “Share” button.)
Epic Games
Cat McCormack, a spokesperson for Epic Games, says that people can submit takedown requests through its illegal content reporting form tool, which she says will be updated with additional fields to comply with the Take It Down Act.
To submit a takedown request through the form, people should select either the “Cyber violence” or “Cyber violence against women” for the “What type of content or behavior are you reporting?” question and then select either “Non-consensual (intimate) material sharing, including (image-based) sexual abuse (excluding content depicting minors)” or “Non-consensual sharing of material containing deepfake or similar technology using a third party’s features (excluding content depicting minors)” options.
Roblox
In-app, users can submit removal requests through the “Report Abuse” menu item, or through a reporting form in its help center. At the time of publication, the page had not yet been updated with Take It Down Act-specific information.
“Roblox proudly supported the passage of the Take It Down Act and we are fully aligned with its objectives,” says Nicky Jackson Colaco, Roblox’s global head of public policy. “While our platform does not allow users to exchange images or videos through chat, to help protect individuals from non-consensual explicit imagery (NCII), we are introducing dedicated reporting capabilities.”
A spokesperson confirmed that users can upload images and videos to both the developer forums and as part of experiences, which are 3D worlds that users create and play together.
Bumble
Elymae Cedeno, Bumble’s VP of trust and customer experience, says that the dating app takes NCII “very seriously and supported the passage of the Take It Down Act.” Anyone can submit a takedown request through a form included in its help center, and Cedeno says that reports are reviewed promptly and handled “with urgency and care, prioritizing safety and privacy throughout the process.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: wired.com
