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