Congress passes Take It Down act despite major flaws
- "The takedown provision applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content—than the narrower NCII definitions found elsewhere in the bill. The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Lawful content—including satire, journalism, and political speech—could be wrongly censored."
So sexual or intimate themed memes which use realistic looking imagery may end up being able to be taken down. I also find myself disagreeing with the EFF here in spite of generally being a tremendous supporter of their work. In particular their main argument is that there are existing laws which work for this issue, without introducing new potentially abusable legislation:
- "If a deepfake is used for criminal purposes, then criminal laws will apply. If a deepfake is used to pressure someone to pay money to have it suppressed or destroyed, extortion laws would apply. For any situations in which deepfakes were used to harass, harassment laws apply. There is no need to make new, specific laws about deepfakes in either of these situations."
But I think on this issue one should not need to suffer some form of measurable loss or suffering to want intimate/sexual images removed from a site, let alone then having to go through the legal system and file a lawsuit to achieve such.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAKE_IT_DOWN_Act
[2]https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/congress-passes-take-i...
I have friends who were the victim of revenge porn and I think this law would help them. I’m looking forward to this becoming a law.
For being “anti-government types” it sure seems like they voted for dramatic and unprecedented authoritarian uses of the government.
I came across an excellent article on this, but I can’t find it. Basically, authoritarian populism is a response to the rise of the professional managerial class, and the ideological divergence of that class from the rest of the citizenry.
Most of the rules that affect your daily life don’t come from the President, or even high level cabinet officials, but career government officials and managers, as well as government-adjacent institutions such as universities and certain NGOs (the latter of which set rules through impact litigation). How can voters change how this distributed managerial class governs the country? They can elect someone like Trump, who is authoritarian, but whose authoritarianism is directed chiefly at the government itself and adjacent institutions.
It doesn’t behoove the EFF’s primary mission to alienate the large number of Trump voters who chafe at professional managerial control. Its primary mission is advanced by appealing both to the people who oppose policing porn on the internet, and also people who oppose policing so-called “hate speech” on the internet.
To make a comparison, look at Cato. Traditionally they’ve been more aligned with conservatives. But they have stuck to their guns on open borders and free trade, even though that’s made them hated by much of the more populist modern right.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146...
I can't identify where EFFs concerns are coming from. There's a specific limitation of liability for online platforms and the entire process appears to be complaint driven and requires quite a bit of evidence from the complaintant.
What actually concerns me in this bill?
(B) INVOLVING MINORS.—Except as provided in subparagraph (C), it shall be unlawful for any person, in interstate or foreign commerce, to use an interactive computer service to knowingly publish a digital forgery of an identifiable individual who is a minor with intent to—“(i) abuse, humiliate, harass, or degrade the minor; or
“(ii) arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.
“(C) EXCEPTIONS.—Subparagraphs (A) and (B) shall not apply to—
“(i) a lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity of—
“(I) a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State; or
“(II) an intelligence agency of the United States;
Wut? Why do you need this? Are we the baddies?
The limitation on liability is only saying they're not responsible for the consequences of taking something down, not for the consequences of leaving something up.
That, plus the FTC being able to sue any company for the inevitable false negatives that will happen means that the only reasonable response to takedown requests is to be extremely cautious about rejecting them. It'll inevitably be abused for spurious takedowns way more than the DMCA already is.
fits the definitions of an intimate visual depiction,
Hardly seems difficult. I think a lot of services have TOSes which cover this type of content. The text of the bill also plainly defines what is covered.
are trivial to automate
And removal is trivial to automate. I'm pretty sure providers already have systems which cover this case. Those that don't likely don't allow posting of pornographic material whether it's consensual or not.
they're not responsible for the consequences of taking something down
So the market for "intimate depictions" got a little harder to participate in. This is a strange hill to fight over.
It'll inevitably be abused for spurious takedowns
Of pornographic content. The law is pretty well confined to "visual depictions." I can see your argument on it's technical merits I just can't rationalize it into the real world other than for some absurdly narrow cases.
The whole point of this is discussion is that this is going to be used to censor everything, not just 'intimate visual depictions'.
How does your trivial removal automation distinguish between 'intimate depictions' and 'political imagery I dislike'?
It doesn't; however, you would immediately have a civil case against the person and/or their representative for their false claim. That's not spelled out in the bill but it should be obvious.
The whole point of this is discussion is that this is going to be used to censor everything
That's the claim. You may accept it without objection. I simply do not. Now I'm offering a slightly modified discussion. Is that alright?
not just 'intimate visual depictions'.
I'm sure you would agree that any automation would obviously only be able to challenge images. This does create a vulnerability to be sure, but I do not agree that it automatically creates the wholesale censorship of political speech that you or the EFF envisions here.
It also makes efforts at being scoped only to sites which rely on user generated content effectively limiting it to social media platforms and certain types of adult content websites. Due to their nature it's already likely that these social media platforms do _not_ allow adult content on their websites and have well developed mechanisms to handle this precise problem.
The bill could be refined for civil liberties sake; however, in it's current state, I fail to see the extreme danger of it.
It doesn't; however, you would immediately have a civil case against the person and/or their representative for their false claim.
Great. So a motivated bad actor can send out 10,000,000 bogus takedowns for images promoting political positions and people they disagree with, and they have to be taken down immediately, and then all 10 million people affected have to individually figure out who the hell actually submitted the takedowns, and have enough money for lawyers, and enough time to engage in a civil suit, and in the end they might get money, if they can somehow prove that taking down those specific images damaged them personally, rather than just a cause they believe in, but will they get the images restored?
This just smacks of obliviousness and being woefully out of touch, even before we get to
That's not spelled out in the bill but it should be obvious.
...which almost makes it sound like this whole thing is just an elaborate troll.
however, you would immediately have a civil case against the person and/or their representative for their false claim.
Look how well that's worked against DMCA and Youtube copyright strike abuse. In the case that the posts that are being taken down are not commercial, being able to prove damages means that the effectiveness of such a deterrent are minimal. The act could have put in some sort of disincentive against fraudulent reports, or even provided for a way to find the reason your stuff was taken down, but notably does not do so.
however, you would immediately have a civil case against the person and/or their representative for their false claim. That's not spelled out in the bill but it should be obvious.
Wow. Not sure if this is ludicrously bad faith or just ludicrously naive/ignorant/unthinking but it's ludicrous either way. Plenty enough to nullify every other thing you attempt to say on the topic.
That, plus the FTC being able to sue any company for the inevitable false negatives that will happen means that the only reasonable response to takedown requests is to be extremely cautious about rejecting them.
... or to finally hire enough moderators to make competent judgements to avoid getting a counter lawsuit for restricting free speech.
IN GENERAL.—The term “covered platform” means a website, online service, online application, or mobile application—(i) that serves the public; and
(ii) (I) that primarily provides a forum for user-generated content, including messages, videos, images, games, and audio files; or
(II) for which it is in the regular course of trade or business of the website, online service, online application, or mobile application to publish, curate, host, or make available content of nonconsensual intimate visual depictions.
If you publish the content on your own website or on certain public websites you don't even have to respond to these requests. You do; however, open yourself to criminal and civil liability for publicly hosting any nonconseual visual images. Your provider is also excluded from service and cannot legally be compelled to participate in their removal.
Assume they are a serial liar. Or that they are a political opponent with zero shame.
How have DMCA takedowns gone? How many upstanding developers have been nuked, without recourse, by some invalid or malevolent false report? How many times over and over[0] has HN loudly lamented the DMCA takedowns, decried how awful it is to have state censorship—and one without any meaningful adversarial process?
Well, here we are again: "The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests".
If courts don't strike this down, this might end up becoming DMCA for the whole of society. It'll certainly be used by politicians to silence critics. It'll be overrun by trolls. You'll see the results, and you'll hate them.
"And I’m going to use that bill for myself too, if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.”"
How many times over and over[0] has HN loudly lamented the DMCA takedowns, decried how awful it is to have state censorship—and one without any meaningful adversarial process?
DMCA does have an adversarial process. You're more likely thinking of e.g. YouTube's automatic DMCA-like process.
DCMA responses are all about minimizing costs. It's much cheaper to just do it.
Private companies will respond to this in exactly the same way.
The bill does have a nullifying logical flaw in it though for purposes of defense, but I also don’t think that enforcement is really the point of the law. It is very much more likely that feigned intimidation and acquiescence are the intended purpose, i.e., making the currently still painless violation of rights the easiest route for entities to follow.
It has been the MO to undermine, infiltrate, and subvert the fundamental laws in the USA that restrict the government and authoritarians from infringing on the inalienable, God given rights of the people for many decades now.
Has a new YC business started that is looking to handle DMCA requests or is this largely the domain of Vanta and others?
Why do you believe it runs afoul of the First Amendment?
Similarly, absent some Constitutional protection, states can restrict who can purchase lock picks.
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and that the government's regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional.
In the Bernstein cases, the Government was trying to squelch the author from publishing code that he personally wrote, that had scientific expressive value, and of which the Government required prepublication review, and the Ninth Circuit held:
We emphasize the narrowness of our First Amendment holding. We do not hold that all software is expressive. Much of it surely is not. Nor need we resolve whether the challenged regulations constitute content-based restrictions, subject to the strictest constitutional scrutiny, or whether they are, instead, content-neutral restrictions meriting less exacting scrutiny. We hold merely that because the prepublication licensing regime challenged here applies directly to scientific expression, vests boundless discretion in government officials, and lacks adequate procedural safeguards, it constitutes an impermissible prior restraint on speech.
The Court, as you can see, was trying very hard not to declare some sort of framework or test to be applied to future cases.
The actual problem is the fair use problem, because it prevents you from e.g. creating a third party Netflix or Twitter client without the corporation's approval. Which in turn forces you to use their app and puts them in control of recommendations, keeps you within a walled garden instead of exposing you to other voices, etc. It's a mechanism to monopolize the marketplace of ideas.
Of course, Apple et al have turned this against the creators in order to extract their vig, which is a related problem.
That law is consistent with trade secret law in general. The First Amendment does not require trade secrets to lose all protection. If it did, you could freely disclose your own employer’s secrets without penalty.
Can you freely discuss my employer's secrets without penalty?
Yes; in order for trade secrets to be protected, they have to be secret.
Did Bunner work at the DVD Consortium?
I have no knowledge of this.
Yes; in order for trade secrets to be protected, they have to be secret.
This is not true. See the Uniform Trade Secrets Act for the full text. People who know or have reason to know that the information is a secret are bound by the law, and the definition of "trade secret" does not require that the information never have been disclosed to an unauthorized person.
The Uniform Trade Secrets Act (the law in most states) defines misappropriation as:
(i) acquisition of a trade secret of another by a person who knows or has reason to know that the trade secret was acquired by improper means; or
(ii) disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied consent by a person who
(A) used improper means to acquire knowledge of the trade secret; or
(B) at the time of disclosure or use, knew or had reason to know that his knowledge of the trade secret was
(I) derived from or through a person who had utilized improper means to acquire it;
(II) acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or
(III) derived from or through a person who owed a duty to the person seeking relief to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or
(C) before a material change of his [or her] position, knew or had reason to know that it was a trade secret and that knowledge of it had been acquired by accident or mistake.
There is no line.
edit: maybe i was a bit too rude. my memory was fresh with deepfakes used for scams, i get ads like that daily, then i remembered these: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ai-presidents-gaming-biden-an... - and i kinda get where you're coming from now. i still believe there should be _at least some kind of_ regulation (because the platforms themselves they won't remove anything as long as it keeps users on), not for opinions but for non-facts, but then that's another problem and it is: do we trust the enforcers to enforce properly?
that video of donald sucking elon's toes probably counts.
I understand the horrors and so-called purpose this new act is trying to address, but the genie is out of the stable diffusion and successors' bottle.
Just this weekend, Trump signed an executive order declaring and celebrating World Intellectual Property Day[0], the kind of day IIPA and DMCA would have their lovechild conceived, while creepy uncles ACTA, TPP, TRIPS, and SOPA/PIPA lurked and maybe even watched in the attic.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act fits right in with this family reunion, handing those in power another tool to censor the internet under the guise of protecting "intimate images." Its vague net is so wide, it'll have even more platforms spooked into nuking fair use or satire just to dodge legal heat. It's no coincidence that censorship goes hand in hand with IP laws, control the content, monitor what people are submitting. This is exactly why people are building distributed tech like IPFS or ActivityPub and federated networks to keep information flowing, not locked behind government filters or takedown ultimatums.
Before you know it, it will be obscene to disagree with those in charge.
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/worl...
Take It Down Act: A Flawed Attempt to Protect Victims That'll Lead to Censorship - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43296886 - March 2025 (38 comments)
The Take It Down Act isn't a law, it's a weapon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43293573 - March 2025 (30 comments)
The "Take It Down" Act - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43274656 - March 2025 (99 comments)