Trump Signs Internet Censorship Law, Take It Down Act

Trump vowed to abuse internet censorship law, the Take It Down Act. Reports suggest he just signed it into law.

The Trump regimes war on free speech is continuing. We’ve already highlighted some of the other ways the Trump administration has been trying to crack down on free speech online. This includes the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (or IODA). Of course, for anyone paying attention, Trumps efforts to implement mass internet censorship isn’t exclusive to those two acts.

Another law aimed at silencing speech Trump personally disagrees with is through another law known as the Take it Down Act. Like other mass internet censorship laws, the laws backers put on a fig leaf over why they feel they need such a censorship law. In this case, it is to fight sexual abuse imagery which is actually a real problem. Now, who wouldn’t want to fight such content in the first place? Obviously, this excuse is just a way to implement an actual censorship law while sounding like you are doing something positive in the world when, in reality, there is the obvious ulterior motive at play.

Back in March, Mike Masnick of Techdirt highlighted the fact that not only is silencing speech a posibility, but Trump actually announced that this is how he intends on using the law in the first place. So, not even really hiding his real intent with this law. From TechDirt:

During his address to Congress this week, Donald Trump endorsed the Take It Down Act while openly declaring his plans to abuse it: “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.”

(You might think a former president openly declaring his intent to abuse a content moderation law would be big news. The media, apparently swamped with other Trump outbursts, didn’t even seem to notice.)

This is, of course, exactly what we (and many others) warned about in December when discussing the Take It Down Act. The bill aims to address a legitimate problem — non-consensual intimate imagery — but does so with a censorship mechanism so obviously prone to abuse that the president couldn’t even wait until it passed to announce his plans to misuse it.

And Congress laughed. Literally.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that Congress paid attention. The Senate recently passed the Act via unanimous consent, and it’s now headed to the House with strong support. Earlier this week, Melania Trump endorsed the bill, and Donald Trump briefly mentioned it during his address to Congress, and as mentioned above, he explicitly revealed his plans to abuse it:

And Elliston Berry, who became a victim of an illicit deepfake image produced by a peer. With Ellison’s help, the Senate just passed the Take It Down Act and this is so important. Thank you very much, John. John Thune. Thank you. Stand up, John. [Applause] Thank you, John. Thank you all very much. Thank you and thank you to John Thune and the Senate.

Great job. To criminalize the publication of such images online is terrible, terrible thing. And once it passes the House, I look forward to signing that bill into law. Thank you. 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.

There it is — a sitting president openly declaring his intent to abuse a content moderation law to remove speech he doesn’t like. This isn’t speculation or paranoia about potential misuse — it’s an explicit promise, made in front of both houses of Congress, as well as multiple Supreme Court Justices, of his intent to weaponize the law against protected speech.

So here we are. Civil liberties groups have been jumping up and down and waving their arms about how this bill needs basic safeguards against abuse. The media, apparently suffering from Trump-crazy-statement-fatigue, has mostly yawned. Congress, eager to show they’re “doing something” about online abuse, doesn’t seem interested in the details.

That leads us to Trump signing of the law much more recently. From The Guardian:

President Donald Trump on Monday signed into law the Take It Down Act, a measure that imposes penalties for online sexual exploitation that first lady Melania Trump helped usher through Congress, and he had her sign it, too, despite what sounded like a mild objection on her part.

“C’mon, sign it anyway,” the president told his wife. “She deserves to sign it.”

After she added her signature, the president showed the document bearing both of their names to the audience at the signing ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.

Melania Trump’s signature is merely symbolic because first ladies are not elected and have no formal role in the signing of legislation.

In March, Melania Trump used her first public appearance since resuming the role of first lady to travel to Capitol Hill to lobby House members to pass the bill following its approval by the Senate.

The report makes a half-hearted attempt at softly noting that there are critics of the legislation as well, though it completely downplays the very real threats this legislation actually presents with a single paragraph:

But the measure isn’t without critics. Free speech advocates and digital rights groups say the bill is too broad and could lead to censorship of legitimate images, including legal pornography and LGBTQ+ content. Others say it could allow the government to monitor private communications and undermine due process.

Civil rights organizations have banded together back in February to point out that this goes far beyond just the censorship of LGBTQ+ content and could lead to the censorship of any kind of speech thanks to the lack of any guard rails. From their open letter (PDF):

In its current form, the bill creates a notice and takedown (NTD) mechanism that would result in the removal of not just nonconsensual intimate imagery but also speech that is neither illegal nor actually NDII. This mechanism is likely unconstitutional and will undoubtedly have a censorious impact on users’ free expression. While the criminal provisions of the bill include appropriate exceptions for consensual commercial pornography and matters of public concern,
those exceptions are not included in the bill’s takedown system. The text, therefore, creates an NTD mechanism for content that is not NDII as defined by the law, and that would result in the takedown of consensual, constitutionally protected speech. Because the bill mandates the takedown of content within 48 hours, and reasonable efforts to identify and remove known copies, it also heavily incentivizes the use of automated content detection and filtering techniques, which would be required for many platforms to comply with the NTD mandate at scale. These content filtering techniques have significant limitations, tending to lead to the inappropriate takedown and suppression of lawful speech. Moreover, the bill mandates this NTD regime without even the minimal guardrails that accompany the DMCA. Even with those guardrails, the DMCA is routinely abused to silence constitutionally protected information and criticism. The TAKE IT DOWN Act will cause similar, if not more, censorship of lawful user speech if it is not amended to address these concerns.

The bill also presents an existential threat to encrypted platforms. As currently drafted, the bill appropriately excludes email and other services that do not primarily consist of user-generated content from the NTD system. Direct messaging services, cloud storage systems, and other similar services for private communication and storage, however, could be required to comply with the NTD. These services are more akin to the private “email services” exempted from the bill. Without clarification, the bill incentivizes companies’ use of invasive monitoring technologies on services where users rightfully expect their communications to be private.

So, this legislation is not only very open to being abused, but the US president has flat out promised to abuse the new law to take down speech he personally doesn’t like to boot. It’s a terrifying thing to see and, as Masnick pointed out, the media has generally greeted this with a collective “meh” even though their profession obligates them to take the stance of protecting free speech.

Since so much internet infrastructure relies on US services – including Canadian’s who use such services, this will definitely have an impact on Canadian services moving forward. It’s all very concerning to say the least.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.