"But we are not in a normal world. Parts of the Take It Down Act are more likely to become a sword for a corrupt presidential administration than a shield to protect NCII victims — and supporters of both civil liberties and Big Tech accountability should recognize it.
The typical discourse around a bill like the Take It Down Act works this way: lawmakers propose a rule that’s supposed to do a good and popular thing, like help victims of nonconsensual sexual images get those images taken down. Civil liberties advocates go “wait a minute, this has a lot of bad side effects!” Then everybody argues. Is it okay to risk platforms removing legally protected speech if they’re removing lots of bad stuff alongside it? Is protecting the right to private encrypted messaging worth the harm of people secretly transmitting harmful content? Does the bill’s language make one set of outcomes more likely than the other, and is there better language that would tip the scales?
These arguments miss the larger current context. No matter how carefully crafted the Take It Down Act is, it won’t be signed by a president who intends to follow it in good faith. It will be selectively enforced by an administration that consistently treats laws as bargaining chips or ammunition, using them to attack political enemies while exempting anyone who earns Trump’s favor. Right now that happens to include several of the internet’s biggest social media companies, and by extension, some of the biggest potential conduits of NCII.
To put it more simply: even if you accept the Take It Down Act’s tradeoffs in the name of making tech companies protect users, in the era of gangster tech regulation, you’re probably not getting the trade."
https://www.theverge.com/policy/624974/take-it-down-act-deepfakes-nonconsensual-pornography-trump-constitutional-crisis
Crosswalk buttons in three California cities were hacked to play AI-generated deepfake voices of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
Fake Musk begging for friendship and Cybertruck deals
Fake Zuck joking about AI dominance and democracy
Messages disrupted accessibility features for the visually impaired
Videos went viral across social media
Spain is done with AI slop and disinfo
