Congress Takes Another Step Toward Enabling Broad Internet Censorship
- The potential for abuse in the TAKE IT DOWN Act's notice-and-takedown system, particularly in regards to frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests.r
- The impact on free expression, user privacy, and due process under the bill's provisions, including the 48-hour takedown deadline and automated filters.r
- The need for effective safeguards against censorship and surveillance, such as clarification of problematic provisions through amendments.r r
r r The House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the TAKE IT DOWN Act, a bill aimed at removing non-consensual intimate imagery online. However, critics argue that the notice-and-takedown system threatens free expression, user privacy, and due process. The 48-hour takedown deadline and automated filters may lead to wrongful censorship of lawful content, including satire, journalism, and political speech. Committee leadership rejected attempts to amend the bill, paving the way for a potential floor vote and President Trump's signature. Experts warn that this approach can be abused, particularly by powerful individuals seeking to silence criticism."}","summary":""}
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Original Message:
The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday advanced the TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146) , a bill that seeks to speed up the removal of certain kinds of troubling online content. While the bill is meant to address a serious problem—the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII)—the notice-and-takedown system it creates is an open invitation for powerful people to pressure websites into removing content they dislike.
As we’ve written before, while protecting victims of these heinous privacy invasions is a legitimate goal, good intentions alone are not enough to make good policy.
TELL CONGRESS: "Take It Down" Has No real Safeguards
This bill mandates a notice-and-takedown system that threatens free expression, user privacy, and due process, without meaningfully addressing the problem it claims to solve. The “takedown” provision applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content at all—than the narrower NCII definitions found elsewhere in the bill. The bill contains no protections against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Lawful content—including satire, journalism, and political speech—could be wrongly censored.
The legislation’s 48-hour takedown deadline means that online service providers, particularly smaller ones, will have to comply quickly to avoid legal risks. That time crunch will make it impossible for services to verify the content is in fact NCII. Instead, services will rely on automated filters—infamously blunt tools that frequently flag legal content, from fair-use commentary to news reporting.
Communications providers that offer users end-to-end encrypted messaging, meanwhile, may be served with notices they simply cannot comply with, given the fact that these providers cannot view the contents of messages on their platforms. Platforms may respond by abandoning encryption entirely in order to be able to monitor content—turning private conversations into surveilled spaces.
While several committee Members offered amendments to clarify these problematic provisions in the bill during committee consideration, committee leadership rejected all attempts to amend the bill.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act is now expected to receive a floor vote in the coming weeks before heading to President Trump’s desk for his signature. Both the President himself and First Lady Melania Trump have been vocal supporters of this bill, and they have been urging Congress to quickly pass it. Trump has shown just how the bill can be abused, saying earlier this year that he would personally use the takedown provisions to censor speech critical of the president.
TELL CONGRESS: "Take It Down" Has No real Safeguards
Fast tracking a censorship bill is always troubling. TAKE IT DOWN is the wrong approach to helping people whose intimate images are shared without their consent. We can help victims of online harassment without embracing a new regime of online censorship.
Congress should strengthen and enforce existing legal protections for victims, rather than opting for a broad takedown regime that is ripe for abuse.
Tell your Member of Congress to oppose censorship and to oppose S. 146.
Source: Deeplinks
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