May 2, 2025 • 20 mins
This week, the first federal legislation on deepfake porn -- the Take It Down Act -- passed the U.S. House of Representatives. All it takes is a signature from the president to become law. Levittown co-host Olivia Carville joins TechStuff (Kaleidoscope/IHeart) to discuss how the law works, why it has come under early criticism and what it may mean for young women in Levittown and across the U.S.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, this is Olivia Carvell, one of the hosts of Levittown.
Since we released this series, the US has moved closer
to passing a bill that would crack down on deep
fake pornography. The US House passed the Take It Down
Act with a near unanimous vote, and now that bill
is heading to President Trump's desk. I spoke about this
(00:23):
legislation with the folks over at the tech Stuff podcast,
which is produced by our partners Kaleidoscope and iHeart. We
wanted to share my conversation with them here with you,
our Levittown listeners. So here it is.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
I'm mos Vloscian and today Karra price Night will talk
to Bloomberg's Olivia Carville about the Take It Down Act
and what it means for the future of the Internet.
There is a landmark bill aimed at combating AI harms,
specifically deep fakes.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
They're used in scams, they're used in spreading misinformation online,
and I'd say most notably, they have been used in
the non consensual creation of porn.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Right and that's what this legislation is all about. This
week Congress passed the Take It Down Act, which aims
to crack down on the creation of revenge porn i e.
Pornographic images that are shared non consensually. The Act specifies
that those who distribute revenge porn, whether the quote real
or computer generated, could be fined or subject to prison time.
It's had rare backing from both sides of the political
(01:36):
aisle and from First Lady Milania Trump. As of Wednesday afternoon,
the time of this taping, the bill heads to President Trump,
who's likely to make it law.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Here to walk us through the Take It Down Act
and what it means for tech companies is Olivia Carville,
investigative reporter for Bloomberg News and co host of the
podcast Levittown, which is a must listen agreed wherever you
get your podcast put It covers the rise of deep
fake porn. It also happens to be a co production
of Kaleidoscope. Olivia, Welcome to tax Stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Thank you so much for having me. It's great to
be back with Kaleidoscope's team.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Thanks thanks for being here, Olivia. You've been tracking this
bill for a long time. When did the push for
legislation on deep fake pornography begin.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I mean, it has been a very long journey to
get here. We've seen quite a lot of states across
the US rolling out legislation to try and target deep
fake porn since the revolution really began a number of
years ago. Now at the moment, more than twenty states
across the country have introduced new laws. But one of
(02:41):
the criticisms we heard time and time again, and something
we raised in the Levetown podcast is the fact that
there was no federal law criminalizing this across the US.
And this bill was first introduced last summer in twenty
twenty four, its bipartisan legislation. Senators Cruise and Clobashah put
it forward and it unanimously passed in the Senate, but
(03:05):
unfortunately it stalled in the House last year and that
led to a lot of frustration from the victims. Earlier
this year we saw it once again take it down,
was reintroduced, unanimously passed in the Senate, and then earlier
this week and very exciting news, it was also unanimously
passed in the House. And we're talking a vote of
(03:25):
four hundred and nine to two, and that's kind of remarkable.
At the moment, given the current polarized political climate we're
living in right now. The bill is en route to
President Trump's desk and there's a lot of expectation that
he's going to sign it soon.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
So just to go back for a second, what is
the Take It Down Act? And what does it say?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
The Take It Down Act is actually an acronym for
a very long piece of legislation that's tools to address
known exploitation by immobilizing technological deep fakes on websites networks.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I think who came up with take it Down is
pretty easy to remember. Great, Yeah, you know it's it's
an acronym.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, So it is an acronym. And the law really
does exactly what that title implies, which provides a way
to ensure this content can be taken down from the Internet,
because that's where it's particularly harmful, is where it starts
to be shared across high schools and in friendship groups.
So the law goes after two main parties. One, it
(04:31):
makes it a crime for offenders to knowingly publish deep
fake pornography or intimate images, whether they're real or created
with AI, and then if they do, they can serve
up to two or three years in prison, depending if
the individual in the photo is an adult or a minor.
And then it also challenges or holds to account the
(04:54):
technology companies, the social media platforms where often this content
is shared and disseminated on and it forces them to
remove these deep fake images within forty eight hours of
being notified of them.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I have two questions for you, Olivia. Firstly, as this
phenomenon becomes more and more ubiquitous, what will this law
mean practically if you discover you're a victim? What will
it allow you to do you can't do today? And secondly,
you mentioned the liability of the platforms. How does this
intersect with Section two thirty.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So for a victim of deep fake porn, a young
person who maybe finds or discovers that fake pornographic non
consensual images are circulating online, now this law gives them
a path forward to get those photos taken down, to
get them scrubbed from the internet. Finally, so it enables
them to file a report with the social media platform
(05:49):
or the website or app where these images have been
published or disseminated, and to inform them that it's deep
fake porn, that it's non consensual and that they want
it removed, and then within two it has to be removed,
and the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, is responsible for
holding those companies to account to get that taken down.
(06:09):
The other thing it gives victims is a path to justice.
It's a way to go after the offenders who publish
this content or even threatened to publish this content against
the survivors. Well, you ask about two thirty, and that's
a great question, because this is one of the only
pieces of consumer tech legislation where federal regulators have been
(06:31):
able to come in and actually sign a law in
place that impacts young people using these platforms Section two thirty,
and it comes from the Communications Decency Act. It's a
very controversial piece of legislation and it really did change
the Internet. And it was written into law back in
the mid nineties. And don't forget that that's before Facebook
(06:52):
was even created. This law, which governs all these social
media platforms, was written at a time before or social
media even existed. And what it does is it provides
an immunity shield. So these platforms are not responsible for
the content that is uploaded onto them. So anything that
is posted on Facebook Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, now X.
(07:16):
The platforms themselves cannot be held legally responsible for that
content in the choices they make around removing it or
allowing it to stay up. In this law, the platforms
are being held to account to take down deep fake porn,
to take down this specific form of content. And that's
why it's so controversial, and that's why there are critics
(07:37):
of this act because some people think that this law
will be weaponized or abused, and it's going to result
in the platforms taking down a lot more content than
what this legislation covers.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Wasn't.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Section two thirty in part introduced because of concerns over
online pornography.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So two thirty was first introduced because at the time,
judges and the legal system was ruling that platforms were
liable for any content that was posted on their sites.
And that meant that if a platform decided to remove harmful, grotesque, vile,
or violent content, say someone being cyber bullied or punched,
(08:18):
or content about drugs or alcohol, content that they just
didn't want to share with their other users, if they
took that down, they were actually being held responsible for
that decision in the legal system. Judges were saying they
would be held accountable and legally responsible for removing content
and people could sue the platforms for doing so. So
(08:39):
the law was written to actually protect the platforms and
enable them to moderate their content to try and make
the Internet a safer space. It's kind of counterintuitive when
you think about it, because unfortunately now what's resulted is
it's enabled these platforms to have so much power over
the content that's up and enabled them to wash their
hands and say this isn't our responsibility. We can't be
(09:02):
held legally liable for this. We're effectively walking away.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
And necessitated a lot like this one to come into play.
I mean in a certain sense.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah, I mean it definitely did. And here the law
is relatively narrow. We're not talking about any form of content.
We're talking about only content that involves non consensual intimate imagery,
whether that's real or created by AI. So that enables
people who see photos of themselves which have been manipulated
(09:32):
using technology to undress them or turn them naked or
put them into sexual acts, which is something we explored,
and leave itt town. Those images in that content can
be taken down with this act.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Some tech companies and adult websites only fans. Pornhub Matter
already have policies in place where users can request that
revenge porn be taken down. What will be the change
from a user victim point of view once this becomes law.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, you're right. I mean even Nick Meek, the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children, has a tool which
is actually called take it Down, which does exactly the
same thing. Enables people to plug in a photo or
a hashtag which is like a unique idea of each image,
to say I don't want this online and I'm a
victim of this, and please remove it. But the law
(10:24):
regulates this, and it makes it a federal law to
say you have to remove it, and you have to
remove it within two days. So I guess it's just
putting a stricter approach to this, so the platforms know
they have to oblige and they have to get that
content scrubbed from their websites.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
There's an amazing moment in the Levittown podcast where one
of the high school students who realizes she's been a
victim of deep Fate porn. Her father's actually a police officer,
so they try and figure out is there any legal
recourse and the response from the police is basically, there's
nothing we can do. It's kind of amazing in the
arc of your career as a reporter that the law
(11:04):
is actually changing in real time and response to the
stories that you've been covering, these very moving, horrifying stories.
What do you the victims think about this law and
what's been the response among your sources.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
The victims have been waiting for this for a very
long time. When you think about the origin story of
Take It Down, it was when Aliston Barry, a young
teen from Texas, actually went to Senator Cruise's office and
told him that a deep fake image of her had
been circulating on Snapchat and she had asked the platform
to remove it, and after a year, the platform still
(11:39):
hadn't taken that image down. That's what really sparked this
particular piece of legislation. And we've seen young teenage you know,
high school students, college students speaking before Congress pleading for
a law like this, asking for help to find a
path to get these images removed from the internet. Because
i'm fortunately, you know, in teenagers' lives today the digital world,
(12:04):
as you bequit us. They exist within it, and they
merge between the online world and the offline world. They
don't call their friends on the phone, they don't call
their parents on the phone. You know, they'd be more
inclined to send a DM through Instagram or a message
on Snapchat. And when you exist in your social fabric
exists within the digital world. That means that when images
(12:27):
like this are shared, everybody sees them. And I think
that's the real harm here is the photos created. It's fake,
it looks unbelievably convincingly real, and it gets shared to
everyone in your social network within seconds. These young women
have been fighting for help and support, some at the
(12:48):
state level and they've been successful, but really they wanted
this at the federal level. So for a lot of
the young women, I think it's been like a sigh
of relief that finally we're here, and you've given us
and other young women who have been victimized or had
their images weaponized in this way a path to justice,
but also a path to get those photos removed from
(13:11):
the Internet once and for all.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Well, this all sounds like a very positive thing, and
it has bipartisan support. Are there people arguing against it?
And are there criticisms of the bill despite it being
overwhelmingly positive.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
There definitely are As is the way when it comes
to social media or consumer tech, there is an ongoing
tension and like a push and pull between privacy and safety.
You have those who you know, prioritize safety and say
protecting children online is the most important thing we can do.
And then you have those who value privacy and say,
(13:47):
if we're going to create safety regulations or rules that
in any way we can our privacy, you know, that's
a bad thing to do, because privacy is something that
we need to priori ties as well. And so in
this case, you do have free speech and privacy advocates
criticizing this law for being unconstitutional, saying that it could
(14:11):
chill free expression, that it could foster censorship, that it
could result in what they describe as a knee jerk
takedown of content. And what I mean by that is
because these platforms and I'm talking about meta, Snapchat, TikTok,
because they've grown so big and we're talking billions of
pieces of content uploaded on a daily basis, if you're
(14:32):
going to enforce regulation or legislation that says they have
to take down certain content within forty eight hours, and
say they get flooded with millions of requests on a
daily basis, they are not going to have the bandwidth
to actually review each request and that could result in
them just deciding to remove everything that gets reported to them.
(14:54):
And that is what free speech and kind of privacy
advocates fear is going to result in a level of
censorship that we haven't seen before because no one's been
able to really adjust two thirty since it was written
into law. We've also, interestingly seen some criticism coming from
the child safety advocacy space, and they've come out swinging
saying that while this bill, in this legislation is necessary,
(15:18):
it's far from game changing, that it's taken too long
to get here, and that the penalties aren't severe enough
that this is going to put a lot of pressure
on local and state authorities, prosecutors, law enforcement to actually
go after the perpetrators in a more severe way. Because
when you look at Take it Down, we're talking two
years in prison for publishing an intimate image of an adult,
(15:41):
deep fake or real, and up to three years for
a minor.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
What about the tech companies, I mean, are they viewing
this as the first battle line in the way to
fight over the future of Section two thirty. Have their
lobbyists been active on this issue, and how are they
preparing for this extraordinary new set of responsibilities that will
come with a passage of this bill? Is so you
mean to get signed by President Trump.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Well, the tech companies, a lot of them actually do
have rules in place that says non consensual intimate or
sexual images can't be shared. I mean, even on Metas
platforms alone, it's against the rules to post any nude photos.
But in this case, now that they're being kind of
forced to do so by regulation, Metas come out in
(16:26):
support of this, saying, you know, we do think that
deep fake porn shouldn't exist on our platform, and we
will do what we can to take it down. I
think that from the platform's perspectives, they don't want fake photos,
fake naked photos of teenage girls shared on their platforms,
like that's not a positive use case of their networks
(16:48):
at all. They don't want their users sharing or distributing
this content. And now they're being told and hold to
account to ensure that it's taken down within two days.
And I'd be interesting to see how the companies internally
are responding to this, and what the process is going
to be and whether it's actually going to change anything.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Olivia, just to close, I mean, you've had kind of
an extraordinary run this year, putting out the Levittown podcast,
also having extraordinary documentary called Can't Look Away that Bloomberg
produced distributed about the harms of social media. Can you
sort of take a step back and describe this moment,
because one thing that Karen and I talk about and
(17:30):
think about is that five years ago, the idea that
the law might catch up to the tech companies and
there would be enough social pressure to insist on changes
to protect users from harm seems to be like a fantasy.
But in this moment, there seems to be some promise
that it's actually happening. Can you speak about that.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
I've been covering the dangers of the digital world for
Bloomberg for going on almost four years now, and I
have been terrified by what I've seen online. And I'm
not talking just deep fake porn and you know, witnessing
the real world consequences of these photographs being shared among
(18:14):
teenagers in high schools, and I'm talking the impact on
the young women who are targeted, but also the young
men who think that it's normal to create and share
photos like this, think it's a joke. The way in
which teens and this generation are kind of warped by technology,
I think we don't fully understand what the long term
(18:35):
consequences of that are going to be. But the harms
of the digital world exist far beyond deep fakes, and
that's what we were exploring and the Can't Look Away film,
and the film itself explores the other ways in which
social media can harm kids, from recommendation algorithms, pushing suicide,
(18:55):
glorifying content, content that is going to lead to or
mental health harms, or eating disorders. It explores the ways
in which kids have been targeted by predators online who
want to sell them drugs, and in many cases they
think they're buying counterfeit pills like xanax or oxycodone, and
(19:17):
it turns out to be laced with enough fentanyl to
kill their entire household, and parents are discovering their children
dead in their bedrooms. So it's been a really difficult
topic to explore, but also in just such a crucial one.
This is one of the most essential issues of our time,
and I think that this has been a challenging yet
(19:40):
very rewarding area to explore. And I know there's a
lot of criticism of the Take It Down Act, but
regardless of the controversy, most people agree this is a
step in the right direction. And I think this act
is a good thing. But it's very narrow. You know,
we're only talking about removing content that is non consensual
(20:02):
intimate imagery. We're not talking about all the other content
that could potentially harm kids. So while the fight here
is a win and we should celebrate that, the broader
concern around protecting our children in the online world is ongoing.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Olivia, Thank you, Thanks Olivia.
Hey, this is Olivia Carvell, one of the hosts of Levittown.
Since we released this series, the US has moved closer
to passing a bill that would crack down on deep
fake pornography. The US House passed the Take It Down
Act with a near unanimous vote, and now that bill
is heading to President Trump's desk. I spoke about this
(00:23):
legislation with the folks over at the tech Stuff podcast,
which is produced by our partners Kaleidoscope and iHeart. We
wanted to share my conversation with them here with you,
our Levittown listeners. So here it is.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
I'm mos Vloscian and today Karra price Night will talk
to Bloomberg's Olivia Carville about the Take It Down Act
and what it means for the future of the Internet.
There is a landmark bill aimed at combating AI harms,
specifically deep fakes.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
They're used in scams, they're used in spreading misinformation online,
and I'd say most notably, they have been used in
the non consensual creation of porn.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Right and that's what this legislation is all about. This
week Congress passed the Take It Down Act, which aims
to crack down on the creation of revenge porn i e.
Pornographic images that are shared non consensually. The Act specifies
that those who distribute revenge porn, whether the quote real
or computer generated, could be fined or subject to prison time.
It's had rare backing from both sides of the political
(01:36):
aisle and from First Lady Milania Trump. As of Wednesday afternoon,
the time of this taping, the bill heads to President Trump,
who's likely to make it law.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Here to walk us through the Take It Down Act
and what it means for tech companies is Olivia Carville,
investigative reporter for Bloomberg News and co host of the
podcast Levittown, which is a must listen agreed wherever you
get your podcast put It covers the rise of deep
fake porn. It also happens to be a co production
of Kaleidoscope. Olivia, Welcome to tax Stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Thank you so much for having me. It's great to
be back with Kaleidoscope's team.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Thanks thanks for being here, Olivia. You've been tracking this
bill for a long time. When did the push for
legislation on deep fake pornography begin.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I mean, it has been a very long journey to
get here. We've seen quite a lot of states across
the US rolling out legislation to try and target deep
fake porn since the revolution really began a number of
years ago. Now at the moment, more than twenty states
across the country have introduced new laws. But one of
(02:41):
the criticisms we heard time and time again, and something
we raised in the Levetown podcast is the fact that
there was no federal law criminalizing this across the US.
And this bill was first introduced last summer in twenty
twenty four, its bipartisan legislation. Senators Cruise and Clobashah put
it forward and it unanimously passed in the Senate, but
(03:05):
unfortunately it stalled in the House last year and that
led to a lot of frustration from the victims. Earlier
this year we saw it once again take it down,
was reintroduced, unanimously passed in the Senate, and then earlier
this week and very exciting news, it was also unanimously
passed in the House. And we're talking a vote of
(03:25):
four hundred and nine to two, and that's kind of remarkable.
At the moment, given the current polarized political climate we're
living in right now. The bill is en route to
President Trump's desk and there's a lot of expectation that
he's going to sign it soon.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
So just to go back for a second, what is
the Take It Down Act? And what does it say?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
The Take It Down Act is actually an acronym for
a very long piece of legislation that's tools to address
known exploitation by immobilizing technological deep fakes on websites networks.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I think who came up with take it Down is
pretty easy to remember. Great, Yeah, you know it's it's
an acronym.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Yeah, So it is an acronym. And the law really
does exactly what that title implies, which provides a way
to ensure this content can be taken down from the Internet,
because that's where it's particularly harmful, is where it starts
to be shared across high schools and in friendship groups.
So the law goes after two main parties. One, it
(04:31):
makes it a crime for offenders to knowingly publish deep
fake pornography or intimate images, whether they're real or created
with AI, and then if they do, they can serve
up to two or three years in prison, depending if
the individual in the photo is an adult or a minor.
And then it also challenges or holds to account the
(04:54):
technology companies, the social media platforms where often this content
is shared and disseminated on and it forces them to
remove these deep fake images within forty eight hours of
being notified of them.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I have two questions for you, Olivia. Firstly, as this
phenomenon becomes more and more ubiquitous, what will this law
mean practically if you discover you're a victim? What will
it allow you to do you can't do today? And secondly,
you mentioned the liability of the platforms. How does this
intersect with Section two thirty.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So for a victim of deep fake porn, a young
person who maybe finds or discovers that fake pornographic non
consensual images are circulating online, now this law gives them
a path forward to get those photos taken down, to
get them scrubbed from the internet. Finally, so it enables
them to file a report with the social media platform
(05:49):
or the website or app where these images have been
published or disseminated, and to inform them that it's deep
fake porn, that it's non consensual and that they want
it removed, and then within two it has to be removed,
and the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, is responsible for
holding those companies to account to get that taken down.
(06:09):
The other thing it gives victims is a path to justice.
It's a way to go after the offenders who publish
this content or even threatened to publish this content against
the survivors. Well, you ask about two thirty, and that's
a great question, because this is one of the only
pieces of consumer tech legislation where federal regulators have been
(06:31):
able to come in and actually sign a law in
place that impacts young people using these platforms Section two thirty,
and it comes from the Communications Decency Act. It's a
very controversial piece of legislation and it really did change
the Internet. And it was written into law back in
the mid nineties. And don't forget that that's before Facebook
(06:52):
was even created. This law, which governs all these social
media platforms, was written at a time before or social
media even existed. And what it does is it provides
an immunity shield. So these platforms are not responsible for
the content that is uploaded onto them. So anything that
is posted on Facebook Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, now X.
(07:16):
The platforms themselves cannot be held legally responsible for that
content in the choices they make around removing it or
allowing it to stay up. In this law, the platforms
are being held to account to take down deep fake porn,
to take down this specific form of content. And that's
why it's so controversial, and that's why there are critics
(07:37):
of this act because some people think that this law
will be weaponized or abused, and it's going to result
in the platforms taking down a lot more content than
what this legislation covers.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Wasn't.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Section two thirty in part introduced because of concerns over
online pornography.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So two thirty was first introduced because at the time,
judges and the legal system was ruling that platforms were
liable for any content that was posted on their sites.
And that meant that if a platform decided to remove harmful, grotesque, vile,
or violent content, say someone being cyber bullied or punched,
(08:18):
or content about drugs or alcohol, content that they just
didn't want to share with their other users, if they
took that down, they were actually being held responsible for
that decision in the legal system. Judges were saying they
would be held accountable and legally responsible for removing content
and people could sue the platforms for doing so. So
(08:39):
the law was written to actually protect the platforms and
enable them to moderate their content to try and make
the Internet a safer space. It's kind of counterintuitive when
you think about it, because unfortunately now what's resulted is
it's enabled these platforms to have so much power over
the content that's up and enabled them to wash their
hands and say this isn't our responsibility. We can't be
(09:02):
held legally liable for this. We're effectively walking away.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
And necessitated a lot like this one to come into play.
I mean in a certain sense.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah, I mean it definitely did. And here the law
is relatively narrow. We're not talking about any form of content.
We're talking about only content that involves non consensual intimate imagery,
whether that's real or created by AI. So that enables
people who see photos of themselves which have been manipulated
(09:32):
using technology to undress them or turn them naked or
put them into sexual acts, which is something we explored,
and leave itt town. Those images in that content can
be taken down with this act.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Some tech companies and adult websites only fans. Pornhub Matter
already have policies in place where users can request that
revenge porn be taken down. What will be the change
from a user victim point of view once this becomes law.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, you're right. I mean even Nick Meek, the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children, has a tool which
is actually called take it Down, which does exactly the
same thing. Enables people to plug in a photo or
a hashtag which is like a unique idea of each image,
to say I don't want this online and I'm a
victim of this, and please remove it. But the law
(10:24):
regulates this, and it makes it a federal law to
say you have to remove it, and you have to
remove it within two days. So I guess it's just
putting a stricter approach to this, so the platforms know
they have to oblige and they have to get that
content scrubbed from their websites.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
There's an amazing moment in the Levittown podcast where one
of the high school students who realizes she's been a
victim of deep Fate porn. Her father's actually a police officer,
so they try and figure out is there any legal
recourse and the response from the police is basically, there's
nothing we can do. It's kind of amazing in the
arc of your career as a reporter that the law
(11:04):
is actually changing in real time and response to the
stories that you've been covering, these very moving, horrifying stories.
What do you the victims think about this law and
what's been the response among your sources.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
The victims have been waiting for this for a very
long time. When you think about the origin story of
Take It Down, it was when Aliston Barry, a young
teen from Texas, actually went to Senator Cruise's office and
told him that a deep fake image of her had
been circulating on Snapchat and she had asked the platform
to remove it, and after a year, the platform still
(11:39):
hadn't taken that image down. That's what really sparked this
particular piece of legislation. And we've seen young teenage you know,
high school students, college students speaking before Congress pleading for
a law like this, asking for help to find a
path to get these images removed from the internet. Because
i'm fortunately, you know, in teenagers' lives today the digital world,
(12:04):
as you bequit us. They exist within it, and they
merge between the online world and the offline world. They
don't call their friends on the phone, they don't call
their parents on the phone. You know, they'd be more
inclined to send a DM through Instagram or a message
on Snapchat. And when you exist in your social fabric
exists within the digital world. That means that when images
(12:27):
like this are shared, everybody sees them. And I think
that's the real harm here is the photos created. It's fake,
it looks unbelievably convincingly real, and it gets shared to
everyone in your social network within seconds. These young women
have been fighting for help and support, some at the
(12:48):
state level and they've been successful, but really they wanted
this at the federal level. So for a lot of
the young women, I think it's been like a sigh
of relief that finally we're here, and you've given us
and other young women who have been victimized or had
their images weaponized in this way a path to justice,
but also a path to get those photos removed from
(13:11):
the Internet once and for all.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Well, this all sounds like a very positive thing, and
it has bipartisan support. Are there people arguing against it?
And are there criticisms of the bill despite it being
overwhelmingly positive.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
There definitely are As is the way when it comes
to social media or consumer tech, there is an ongoing
tension and like a push and pull between privacy and safety.
You have those who you know, prioritize safety and say
protecting children online is the most important thing we can do.
And then you have those who value privacy and say,
(13:47):
if we're going to create safety regulations or rules that
in any way we can our privacy, you know, that's
a bad thing to do, because privacy is something that
we need to priori ties as well. And so in
this case, you do have free speech and privacy advocates
criticizing this law for being unconstitutional, saying that it could
(14:11):
chill free expression, that it could foster censorship, that it
could result in what they describe as a knee jerk
takedown of content. And what I mean by that is
because these platforms and I'm talking about meta, Snapchat, TikTok,
because they've grown so big and we're talking billions of
pieces of content uploaded on a daily basis, if you're
(14:32):
going to enforce regulation or legislation that says they have
to take down certain content within forty eight hours, and
say they get flooded with millions of requests on a
daily basis, they are not going to have the bandwidth
to actually review each request and that could result in
them just deciding to remove everything that gets reported to them.
(14:54):
And that is what free speech and kind of privacy
advocates fear is going to result in a level of
censorship that we haven't seen before because no one's been
able to really adjust two thirty since it was written
into law. We've also, interestingly seen some criticism coming from
the child safety advocacy space, and they've come out swinging
saying that while this bill, in this legislation is necessary,
(15:18):
it's far from game changing, that it's taken too long
to get here, and that the penalties aren't severe enough
that this is going to put a lot of pressure
on local and state authorities, prosecutors, law enforcement to actually
go after the perpetrators in a more severe way. Because
when you look at Take it Down, we're talking two
years in prison for publishing an intimate image of an adult,
(15:41):
deep fake or real, and up to three years for
a minor.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
What about the tech companies, I mean, are they viewing
this as the first battle line in the way to
fight over the future of Section two thirty. Have their
lobbyists been active on this issue, and how are they
preparing for this extraordinary new set of responsibilities that will
come with a passage of this bill? Is so you
mean to get signed by President Trump.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Well, the tech companies, a lot of them actually do
have rules in place that says non consensual intimate or
sexual images can't be shared. I mean, even on Metas
platforms alone, it's against the rules to post any nude photos.
But in this case, now that they're being kind of
forced to do so by regulation, Metas come out in
(16:26):
support of this, saying, you know, we do think that
deep fake porn shouldn't exist on our platform, and we
will do what we can to take it down. I
think that from the platform's perspectives, they don't want fake photos,
fake naked photos of teenage girls shared on their platforms,
like that's not a positive use case of their networks
(16:48):
at all. They don't want their users sharing or distributing
this content. And now they're being told and hold to
account to ensure that it's taken down within two days.
And I'd be interesting to see how the companies internally
are responding to this, and what the process is going
to be and whether it's actually going to change anything.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Olivia, just to close, I mean, you've had kind of
an extraordinary run this year, putting out the Levittown podcast,
also having extraordinary documentary called Can't Look Away that Bloomberg
produced distributed about the harms of social media. Can you
sort of take a step back and describe this moment,
because one thing that Karen and I talk about and
(17:30):
think about is that five years ago, the idea that
the law might catch up to the tech companies and
there would be enough social pressure to insist on changes
to protect users from harm seems to be like a fantasy.
But in this moment, there seems to be some promise
that it's actually happening. Can you speak about that.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
I've been covering the dangers of the digital world for
Bloomberg for going on almost four years now, and I
have been terrified by what I've seen online. And I'm
not talking just deep fake porn and you know, witnessing
the real world consequences of these photographs being shared among
(18:14):
teenagers in high schools, and I'm talking the impact on
the young women who are targeted, but also the young
men who think that it's normal to create and share
photos like this, think it's a joke. The way in
which teens and this generation are kind of warped by technology,
I think we don't fully understand what the long term
(18:35):
consequences of that are going to be. But the harms
of the digital world exist far beyond deep fakes, and
that's what we were exploring and the Can't Look Away film,
and the film itself explores the other ways in which
social media can harm kids, from recommendation algorithms, pushing suicide,
(18:55):
glorifying content, content that is going to lead to or
mental health harms, or eating disorders. It explores the ways
in which kids have been targeted by predators online who
want to sell them drugs, and in many cases they
think they're buying counterfeit pills like xanax or oxycodone, and
(19:17):
it turns out to be laced with enough fentanyl to
kill their entire household, and parents are discovering their children
dead in their bedrooms. So it's been a really difficult
topic to explore, but also in just such a crucial one.
This is one of the most essential issues of our time,
and I think that this has been a challenging yet
(19:40):
very rewarding area to explore. And I know there's a
lot of criticism of the Take It Down Act, but
regardless of the controversy, most people agree this is a
step in the right direction. And I think this act
is a good thing. But it's very narrow. You know,
we're only talking about removing content that is non consensual
(20:02):
intimate imagery. We're not talking about all the other content
that could potentially harm kids. So while the fight here
is a win and we should celebrate that, the broader
concern around protecting our children in the online world is ongoing.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Olivia, Thank you, Thanks Olivia.
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