House passes bill to ban sharing of revenge porn, sending it to Trump

Washington: The House on Monday overwhelmingly passed bipartisan legislation to criminalize the nonconsensual sharing of sexually explicit photos and videos of others — including artificial-intelligence-generated images known as “deepfakes” — and to mandate that platforms quickly remove them.

The vote of 409-2 cleared the measure for President Donald Trump, who was expected to quickly sign it.

The legislation, known as the Take It Down Act, aims to crack down on the sharing of material known as “revenge porn,” requiring that social media companies and online platforms remove such images within two days of being notified of them.

The measure, which brought together an unlikely coalition of conservatives and liberals in both parties, passed the Senate unanimously in February. The support of Trump, who mentioned it during his joint address to Congress last month, appears to have smoothed its path through Congress.

The legislation, introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is the first internet content law to clear Congress since 2018, when lawmakers approved legislation to fight online sex trafficking. And although it focuses on revenge porn and deepfakes, the bill is seen as an important step toward regulating internet companies that have for decades escaped government scrutiny.

Klobuchar said she brought the bill to the attention of Trump and first lady Melania Trump while speaking with them at an Inauguration Day lunch.

Klobuchar said she was moved by the stories of families whose children had experienced harassment, bullying, or mental and emotional harm because of these images.

The legislation, Klobuchar said in an interview, “was one of the first times that we’ve actually gotten something done on consumer tech issues that is meaningful.”

The Take It Down Act’s overwhelming support highlights mounting anger among lawmakers toward social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X for hosting disinformation and harmful content, particularly images that hurt children and teenagers.

Although revenge porn and deepfakes affect adults and minors alike, both have been particularly potent for teenage girls as the spread of widely available “nudification” apps has spurred boys to surreptitiously concoct sexually explicit images of their female classmates and then circulate them.

Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., who introduced a companion bill in the House, said Monday that the bill would stop the abuse and harassment of young girls that was “spreading like wildfire” online.

“It is outrageously sick to use images — the face, the voice, the likeness — of a young, vulnerable female, to manipulate them, to extort them and to humiliate them publicly just for fun, just for revenge,” Salazar said.

The bill’s passage also echoes similar efforts in statehouses across the country. Every state except South Carolina has a law criminalizing revenge porn. And at least 20 states have laws that address sexually explicit deepfakes.

The measure that passed Monday is part of a yearslong bipartisan effort by lawmakers to address deepfake pornography. Cruz and Klobuchar first introduced the bill last year, when it passed the Senate but died in the Republican-led House. It was reintroduced this year and appeared to gain momentum after it drew the support from Melania Trump, who has focused on youth mental health issues, cyberbullying and social media use.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a millennial, also introduced legislation last year that would have allowed those depicted in sexually explicit deepfakes to sue the people who created and shared them. That bill has not been reintroduced this year.

Lawmakers have in recent years rallied around several bills aimed at protecting children online from sexual exploitation, bullying and addictive algorithms. In January 2024, the CEOs of Meta, TikTok and other tech firms testified before angry lawmakers, defending their platforms.

In the hearing, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to apologize to parents who had lost their children from online harms.

Some speech advocates have warned that the measure could chill free expression, saying such a law could force the removal of legitimate images along with nonconsensual sexual imagery.

“The best of intentions can’t make up for the bill’s dangerous implications for constitutional speech and privacy online,” said Becca Branum, deputy director of the Free Expression Project for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a research group.

Branum added that the Take It Down Act was “a recipe for weaponized enforcement that risks durable progress in the fight against image-based sexual abuse.”

Two Republican representatives voted against the bill: Reps. Eric Burlison of Missouri and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Massie said in a social media post that he believed the legislation was a “slippery slope, ripe for abuse, with unintended consequences.”