The House on Monday overwhelmingly passed the bilateral legislation to criminalize non-consensual distribution of sexually explicit photographs and videos of others-including the images created by AI known as “Deepfakes”-and force platforms to remove them quickly.
The 409 vote with 2 cleared the measure for President Trump, who was expected to sign it quickly.
The legislation, known as act take it down, aims to dispel the exchange of material known as “porn revenge”, requiring social media companies and electronic platforms to remove such images within two days of their community.
The measure, which gathered an unlikely coalition of conservatives and liberals in both parts, unanimously passed the Senate in February. The support of Mr Trump, who mentioned it during his joint Congress management last month, seems to have smooth out his path through Congress.
The legislation, introduced by Senators Ted Cruz, a Republican of Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat of Minnesota, is the first internet content law on the clearance of Congress since 2018, when legislators approved the legislation for sexual transactions. And although it focuses on porn and deepfakes revenge, the bill is regarded as an important step towards regulating internet companies that have fled for decades.
The overwhelming support of the take it it down act highlights the placement of anger among legislators towards social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X for hosting misinformation and harmful content, especially the images that hurt children and adolescents.
Although porn revenge and bases affect adults and minors, both were particularly powerful for teenage girls, as the spread of widely available “nudity” applications has pushed boys to create secret sexual images of women.
Representative MarÃa Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican who introduced a partner at home, said Monday that the bill would stop abuse and harassment of young girls who were “spreading as a fire” online.
“It is outrageously ill to use images – the face, the voice, the resemblance – of a young, vulnerable woman, to handle them, launch them and humiliate them only for fun, only for revenge,” Ms Salazar said.
The extract of the bill also reflects similar efforts to state disorders across the country. Every state except South Carolina has a law that criminalizes porn revenge. And at least 20 states have laws that face sexually clear deep.
The measure that passed Monday is part of a chronic bilateral effort by legislators to deal with Deepfake pornography. Mr Cruz and Ms Klobuchar introduced the bill last year when he crossed the Senate, but died in the Republican home. He re -examined this year and seemed to gain momentum after he drew support from the First Lady, Melania Trump.
Alexandria spokesman OCASIO-CORTEZ, a millennium Democrat from New York, also introduced legislation last year, which would allow those depicted in sexually clear depth to sue the people who created them and shared them. This bill has not been re -introduced this year.
Legislators have gathered in recent years around several accounts with the aim of protecting children online from sexual exploitation, bullying and addictive algorithms. In January 2024, Managing executives of Meta, Tiktok and other technology companies filed before angry legislators, defending their platforms.
During the hearing, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, was forced to apologize to the parents who had lost their children from online damage.
Some speech supporters warned that the measure could relax free expression, saying that such a law could force the removal of legal images along with non -consensual sexual images.
“The best intentions cannot compensate for the dangerous impact of the bill on constitutional speech and private life online,” said Becca Branum, Deputy Director of the Free Expression Project for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a research team.
Mrs Branum added that the action take it down was “a recipe for visual enforcement that is in danger of resistant progress in combating images -based sexual abuse”.
