A law requiring social networks to quickly remove sexual deepfakes and other nonconsensual imagery is now fully in force. But experts warn the policy could do little to help victims — and at worst could facilitate censorship online.
Last May, President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act, a law addressing nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII). The law immediately criminalized distributing NCII, whether in the form of real or AI-generated material, something many states at least partially do already. But its namesake takedown provision is more sweeping. Taking effect a year after the law’s passage — on May 19th of 2026 — it requires online platforms to remove NCII within 48 hours or face fines.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson sent letters to over a dozen tech companies ahead of the deadline, a list the FTC said included Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Automattic, Bumble, Discord, Match Group, Meta, Microsoft, Pinterest, Reddit, SmugMug, Snapchat, TikTok and X. It instructed the platforms to offer users an easy takedown request process and remove offending content within 48 hours, as well as any “known identical copies.” The agency, which is tasked with enforcing the law, reminded companies that violating it could result in civil penalties of more than $53,000 per violation.
Major platforms including Meta, Microsoft, Google, TikTok, and Snap supported the bill, and expressed confidence that they could comply. Snap said in a blog post last year that it “aligns with and complements our ongoing efforts.” Spokesperson Monique Bellamy told The Verge that it’s continuing to “evolve” safety systems, “including investing in tools and technologies to proactively detect and take action on unwanted nudes and similar imagery.”
Meta head of women’s safety Cindy Southworth said the company had “long fought intimate image abuse on our platforms,” including by removing it, helping develop tools to catch it, and suing AI “nudify” app developers that break its rules. Southworth added that the company’s tools are trained not to comply with nudifying requests. “We continue to support the TAKE IT DOWN Act, an important step in addressing this abuse across the internet, and we’ve already been compliant for several months.” TikTok US spokesperson Mahsau Cullinane said the company has a zero-tolerance policy for NCII, and pointed to its partnerships with NCMEC and StopNCII.org; the company currently offers a form and in-app tools for reporting.
Even X, which has a highly checkered history with sexualized AI imagery, has supported the law. The company notoriously allowed sexually explicit AI deepfakes of Taylor Swift to spread in 2024, followed weeks later by a video users believed to be of the rapper Drake engaged in a sexual act. More recently, users called on its integrated AI chatbot Grok to undress users, often without their consent. A New York Times analysis found that in just nine days, Grok shared “at least 1.8 million sexualized images of women,” though some estimates were even higher.
The president quipped at his 2025 State of the Union that “I’m going to use that bill for myself”
But the law’s takedown provision has alarmed both free speech advocates and online abuse opponents — including people who largely supported its criminalization portion. Even when enforced in good faith, takedown laws can encourage companies to over-moderate non-offending content to reduce risk. Under the Trump administration, the Take It Down Act could also become a weapon against political enemies while giving Trump-friendly platforms a pass. The president quipped at his 2025 State of the Union that “I’m going to use that bill for myself,” because “nobody gets treated worse than I do online.” X’s then-CEO Linda Yaccarino attended the signing ceremony, where Trump — whose administration at that point employed its owner Elon Musk — praised her for “doing a great job.”
Trump’s statement was “the opposite of what is true,” says Mary Anne Franks, president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which advocates for policies to fight image-based sexual abuse. It left her skeptical that the law would be enforced fairly, as did Trump’s State of the Union comment. “That’s a weird thing to say, and it’s an announcement right from the highest level that this law is not going to be used in a principled way, but rather to settle personal scores,” she says.
Franks is “suspicious” about why major tech platforms, which typically protest new regulations as a burden on free speech, have endorsed this law. “My fears about this, and I hope I’m wrong, is that the reason why the companies aren’t mad about this is because they know it’s never actually going to be used against them,” she says. That alone could make the law provide little more than false hope for victims of NCII.
“It’s an announcement right from the highest level that this law is not going to be used in a principled way”
But Franks also worries the law could be wielded against platforms the administration views as a thorn in its side, such as Wikipedia. “I think what is the worst thing that can happen is, it turns out to be a paper tiger against the companies that are doing the worst and turns out to be a way to penalize and to actually truly go after unpopular platforms and to censor speech,” Franks says. That speech could include LGBTQ+ expression, especially as gender-affirming care for transgender youth is already being targeted by the FTC. “I’m very worried about that being used as a pretext to crack down even further on either consensually sexually explicit material, or specifically on educational materials for kids who are exploring their gender identity or exploring their sexual orientation,” Franks says. Even if a court decides that’s not within the scope of the law, it would send a clear message to platforms about how to moderate.
Other groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Cato Institute, and Public Knowledge, have warned that the notice and removal provision could have significant consequences on speech, with the EFF calling it a recipe for “overreach and censorship.”
Meanwhile, the law may not even cover what might seem like cut-and-dried digital violations of consent. Some of Grok’s nonconsensual sexualized imagery, for instance, might not count as sexually explicit enough. It’s unclear whether AI tools like Grok count as “creators” of NCII whose owners could bear criminal liability, and if the images are produced privately, it’s not necessarily clear if they’re subject to the takedown provision, either.
In the first year of its enactment, the Justice Department said it used the Take It Down Act’s criminal provision in one conviction of an Ohio man who produced sexually explicit AI deepfakes to harass victims. The takedown provision’s impact could be felt more immediately — but the question is whether those results will make the internet safer.