Hey Platforms: Add TAKE IT DOWN To Your Transparency Reports

from the some-transparency-for-take-it-down dept

Today marks the deadline for online platforms to implement a process for notice-and-takedown of nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) under the TAKE IT DOWN Act (TIDA), which became law one year ago. Starting today, platforms must conspicuously offer a notice-and-removal process for NCII, remove reported material within 48 hours of a “valid removal request” from the person depicted (or their authorized agent), and “make reasonable efforts to identify and remove” duplicates. (I have some qualms about the constitutionality of that last requirement, but that’s a post for another time.) 

Many members of civil society warned Congress while the bill was being negotiated that these takedown requirements are ripe for abuse, but they were ignored. Now that the provisions are in effect, we deserve to find out whether those warnings come true. Platforms should add TAKE IT DOWN takedown statistics to their periodic transparency reports.

A short refresher on the law: TIDA criminalizes the knowing and intentional disclosure of NCII, whether it’s real or AI, whether it’s of adults or minors. The criminal provisions apply to users; the takedown provisions apply to platforms. The definition of a “covered platform” encompasses public-facing user-generated content (UGC)-driven platforms, as well as sites devoted to NCII (what used to be called “revenge porn” sites). The definition exempts ISPs, email service providers, and services that mostly serve “preselected” content and to which UGC is incidental – for example, this site, which posts articles like this one but allows the Techdirt community to comment on them. 

TIDA’s takedown provisions are, in some ways, the codification of existing practices platforms already employ for removing abusive content. Some platforms have ostensibly been removing reported NCII pursuant to a voluntary initiative that dates back to 2021. There’s a similar initiative for terrorist content. Also, existing federal law criminalizes child sex abuse material (CSAM) and requires prompt reporting of apparent CSAM once a platform becomes aware of it. That law explicitly doesn’t require platforms to affirmatively go looking for CSAM (for the same constitutional reasons that give me pause about TIDA’s duplicate-removal provision). Nevertheless, numerous platforms voluntarily have tools and processes in place to proactively detect CSAM, then remove and report it. Plus, just about every online platform has notice-and-takedown processes for copyright-infringing UGC. That’s because everyone wants to qualify for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbor against (potentially ruinous) infringement liability.

Given these existing endeavors in the domains of NCII, CSAM, terrorism, and copyright, hopefully a lot of platforms were able to spend the past year adapting and extending their pre-existing notice-and-removal flows rather than having to reinvent the wheel. Whatever efforts they’ve put into compliance to date are about to be put to the test. Platforms should tell us – their users, Congress, the American public, NCII victims, etc. – how they’re working out.

Much has already been said here at Techdirt about the problems with TIDA’s takedown requirements, so I need not repeat those critiques at length. In brief: 48 hours is incredibly fast, the law doesn’t require a process for the user whose content was removed to appeal a takedown or have it restored, it imposes no penalties for bad-faith takedown requests, and it does a poor job of respecting First Amendment protections for speech. It immunizes platforms from liability for removing content that isn’t actually illegal NCII, while simultaneously giving the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the power to police compliance, as the agency’s chairman reminded a dozen or so major companies in a letter last week. 

This is a recipe for rampant abuse. It incentivizes a “remove first, ask questions never” approach. And it’s particularly dangerous in our current political moment. Not only did President Trump vow to use TIDA against unflattering online speech about him, the Trump FTC is led by two hard-right Republican commissioners who’ve been using their position to pursue an anti-LGBTQ, anti-porn agenda. TIDA’s extremely abusable takedown mandate thus poses a huge risk to online free speech in general, and to content posted by queer and trans people and sex workers in particular. 

With all that said, the takedown requirements have the potential to do a lot of good. I’ve spent the past several years studying AI-generated CSAM, particularly the use of “nudify” apps – and, more recently, Grok –- to create nonconsensual deepfake pornography. I know from my research that one of the harms experienced by victims of NCII (whether deepfake or real) is the fear that anytime someone looks them up online, their NCII will come up in the results. Not only is that humiliating, it could impact their educational and career opportunities, romantic prospects, and other relationships. If platforms have to take down their NCII at their request and keep it down, that may help assuage those fears. (That said, generative AI’s capacity to rapidly make a variety of distinct images could make it hard for victims to keep up, since the onus to submit removal requests is on them or their authorized agents. That’s undeniably burdensome, even if it’s the only way for platforms to know for sure that a particular image is NCII and not constitutionally-protected consensual adult pornography.)

In short, the notice-and-takedown process mandated by TIDA might turn out to be really helpful to NCII victims, or it might be wildly abused, or both. The platforms receiving and processing those notices are the only ones who will know. That’s why they should tell us in their transparency reports. 

To be clear, TIDA doesn’t mandate transparency reporting (though Congress occasionally proposes it). Rather, transparency reports have become a standard practice by platforms over the past 15+ years; they’re typically issued once or twice per year (or even quarterly). You can review the transparency reports from companies like Google (which pioneered the practice in 2010), TikTok, LinkedIn, OpenAI, etc. Transparency reports commonly list statistics for content removals, account actions, and/or regulatory reporting for such categories as copyright, CSAM, spam, scams, and government requests to remove data or to produce data about users. There may be further breakdowns such as percent of requests fully or partially complied with, and the report may explain the platform’s policies for evaluating requests. 

Now that TAKE IT DOWN is fully in effect, platforms should add a category to their transparency reports for TIDA takedown requests, encompassing statistics as well as policy explainers. Here are a few; I’m sure veteran platform employees could add more:

• How many TIDA notices did the platform receive during the time period in question? 
• What percentage of notices did the platform comply with, and what percentage did it reject as invalid? 
• What percentage of notices involved adults, what percentage involved minors, and what percentage are age-unknown?
• What was the average time to takedown? (Of course, the platform probably won’t publish this stat unless it’s under 48 hours.)
• How many takedowns were later reversed and put back, if any?
• What is the total number of unique individuals for whom takedown notices were submitted?
• For companies acting as authorized agents, what are their names and how many requests did they submit? (Sure to be a growth industry under TIDA.)
• How does the platform count notices that fall under multiple legal authorities? For example, a minor’s nude selfie could potentially fall under 3-4 different transparency reporting categories: TIDA, CSAM, DMCA, or terms of service (TOS) violation.
• What is the platform’s policy for evaluating the validity of notices? 
• Does the platform have a process for appeals and putbacks of removed content, even though TIDA does not mandate one?
• What happens to accounts that receive multiple TIDA notices? Is there a “strike system” like many platforms have for repeated copyright infringement or TOS violations?
• What is the platform’s policy about nonconsensually-posted sexually suggestive content? Will it remove it under TIDA, or as a TOS violation? (Things like bikini or lingerie pictures technically don’t meet the definition TIDA uses for intimate imagery, but TIDA requests will surely get used for, say, the nonconsensual deepfake bikini pics Grok was churning out at the start of the year.)

This information will give insights to Congress, users, and the public about how well or poorly the TAKE IT DOWN Act is achieving its intended goal of helping victims get their nonconsensually-shared images offline, while also revealing the prevalence of the sorts of improper and abusive takedown notices the law’s shoddy drafting invites. It might also reveal tensions in how TIDA interacts with other statutes, such as Section 230, the DMCA, and CSAM laws. Those insights, in turn, could be used to make reforms to TIDA – whether to fix the deficiencies everyone already warned Congress about, address any revealed incompatibilities with other laws, or improve the law’s viability as a remedy for NCII victims (without further eroding free speech protections). 

The first half of 2026 ends six weeks from now. That might be too soon to add TIDA statistics to platforms’ H1 2026 transparency reports – especially since many platforms will have just gotten their TIDA processes up and running and will now be busy working out the kinks. But by the end of 2026, I don’t think this is too much to ask. Congress has proposed a seemingly endless number of online safety bills in recent years (RIP Mike’s blood pressure), but the TAKE IT DOWN Act is one of the few to have actually become law, warts and all. We deserve to know how it’s working.

Filed Under: csam, ftc, ncii, removals, take it down act, transparency