During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday with the CEOs of several social media companies including Meta and X, Sen. Mike Lee announced the Preventing Rampant Online Technological Exploitation and Criminal Trafficking, or PROTECT Act.
“The PROTECT Act would, in pertinent part, require websites to verify age, and verify that they've received the consent of any and all individuals appearing on their site in pornographic images, and also require platforms to have meaningful processes for an individual seeking to have images of him or herself removed in a timely manner,” he said.
In a statement on the bill, Sen. Lee said, “Tech companies need to do more to prevent the exploitation that is occurring on their platforms and allow individuals to remove images shared without their consent.”
“Tragically, survivors of sexual abuse are often repeatedly victimized and revictimized over and over and over again by having nonconsensual images of themselves on social media platforms,” he said in the hearing.
Lee cited a study from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that says a single image of child sexual abuse material resurfaced more than 490,000 times online after being reported.
He said the PROTECT Act would address issues like this and create a safer online environment where companies must remove nonconsensual material within a reasonable amount of time.
The bill, if signed into law, would require websites to verify the age and identity of individuals uploading pornographic images and obtain signed consent forms verifying that information for any individual appearing in the uploaded content.
It would require any image uploaded without the consent of those individuals appearing in it to be removed from the platform within 72 hours.
The bill would also criminalize a practice commonly known as ‘revenge porn’ where individuals knowingly upload pornographic images to a website without the consent of those in the images.
