United States "Take it Down" law
The United States recently passed a law about social media moderation responsibilities with regard to revenge porn, referred to as the "Take it Down Act". The Take it Down Act has been described as placing unrealistic moderation burden on online platforms, particularly smaller platforms with limited resources.
This article (https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/24/why-a-new-anti-revenge-porn-law-has-free-speech-experts-alarmed/) raises the question of how the law will affect Mastodon and other federated platforms, so I'm opening the question of how likely it is that the new law will pose problems for social.coop, and whether there are things we need to proactively do to protect ourselves.
Benji Mauer Sun 25 May 2025 2:36PM
Do we have a specific workflow for takedown requests? Or can a field be added to our block request that allows a user to specifically identify something as a Take It Down takedown request so that those can be triaged with priority?
Lilly Irani (social.coop) Sun 25 May 2025 3:38PM
Thank you for alerting us to this.
Could we require a take down request come as a video of the person speaking the request as a way of verifying? I know that could be ai generated video but it would raise the barrier to someone trying to just take down a bunch of different videos they don't like.
Sent from Proton Mail Android
Ammar Sun 25 May 2025 6:56PM
@Lilly Irani (social.coop) I would be worried this would also raise the barrier to a potential victim trying to protect their identity
Ammar Sun 25 May 2025 7:01PM
on the other hand though, this can be optional submission and lack of it can be used to justify not complying within 48 hours (need legal expert opinion on this)
Lilly Irani (social.coop) Sun 25 May 2025 8:07PM
But the alternative is having random people try to take down consensual sexual content, including trans and queer content.
The victim is already imaged online as a video they want to take down so I am unsure how this further compromises their identity. We aren't seeking state identification.
Sent from Proton Mail Android
Paul030 Sun 25 May 2025 5:16PM
https://platformcoop.de/ recently established a Mastodon instance as well (can send you the link via PM), so in case this law would still somehow affect our platform one might find a way to cooperate with them.
Ammar Sun 25 May 2025 7:03PM
Does Mastodon moderation allow for temporary hiding of a post? if not that can be a helpful feature that allows for the post to be taken down until verified and if someone lies/spams the reporting tool to suppress posts then we can take counter action? not sure what counter action tbh, I'm mainly just thinking out loud
Ammar Sun 25 May 2025 7:07PM
OMG, I took a look at the text of the act and it is horrible, protecting victims of revenge porn is NOT what this bill does
chrispomeroyhale Sun 25 May 2025 8:29PM
What is the legal jurisdiction of this instance? As I understand we are an English-language instance and that we have folks worldwide. So to what degree would this be relevant to us? In contrast GDPR which has some elements of extraterritorial jurisdiction. I'd think we should figure that stuff out first before getting into the specifics of US-centric law.
Additionally, the legal concept of the "right to be forgotten" (or erasure) isn't new, and would certainly impact other instances, too. Have we engaged -- or do we have a relationship with -- a digital technology advocacy/rights group?
(Not a lawyer)
Dynamic · Sun 25 May 2025 2:18PM
The Tech Crunch article highlights that the law "gives platforms just 48 hours to comply with a victim’s takedown request or face liability." I have the impression that our Community Working Group (CWG) moderation team generally works faster than this, but it would be useful to know the typical time horizons on moderation requests, and also whether there might be other problematic aspects of the bill that aren't reported in this and other articles.