If a platform ignores your takedown request, there is now a place to report it

TakeItDown.ftc.gov is the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint site for one narrow failure: a platform that has been asked to remove a nonconsensual intimate image and has not done it. The FTC opened the site on May 19, 2026, and on September 23 its consumer-education staff published a short alert explaining when it applies.

The portal arrived a year to the day after the TAKE IT DOWN Act was signed on May 19, 2025, the point at which the law’s platform duties became enforceable. The place to report a platform that ignores a request is therefore about four and a half months old.

The 48-hour condition

The trigger in the FTC’s alert is specific. The first step belongs to the person the image depicts, or someone acting for that person: ask the platform to take the image down. Under the TAKE IT DOWN Act, covered platforms must remove the image and known identical copies within 48 hours of a valid request, according to the FTC’s May 2026 announcement.

Only when that window passes and the platform has neither removed the content nor responded does the FTC’s complaint route come into play. The agency’s alert describes exactly that situation, a platform that has not taken the image down or answered the request after the initial report.

A valid request has parts of its own. Law firm Orrick’s analysis of the enforcement push lists a signature, which may be electronic, information sufficient to locate the image, a statement of good-faith belief that the image is nonconsensual, and contact information for the requester. A request missing those pieces may not start the clock the FTC enforces, a detail that matters because the complaint route assumes a request was properly made first. The FTC alert itself is brief on that point and describes the failure in plain terms: a platform that has not taken the content down or responded within the window the law sets.

The complaint form at TakeItDown.ftc.gov

A person whose request went unanswered can file a complaint at TakeItDown.ftc.gov. According to the FTC’s September 23 alert, the form asks for the name of the platform being reported and as much as possible about where the image was posted, and it leaves room for the reporter to add as much information about themselves, or about the person they are reporting for, as they choose.

The site is also the FTC’s pointer to the wider set of resources around the law, which the alert describes as ways to stop an image from spreading, connect with support organizations and contact law enforcement.

Coverage under the process is defined by the kind of service, not by its size. Orrick describes covered platforms as websites, apps and online services that host user-generated content, with social media, messaging, image and video sharing, and gaming services at the center, and the FTC alert on deepfakes names social media, messaging, and photo or video sharing apps in the same terms.

The enforcement behind the form

A complaint form matters only if someone acts on it. In announcing enforcement, FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said, “In the age of AI, anyone can be targeted, and that becomes even more appalling if children are involved.” The agency paired the portal’s launch with compliance reminder letters to 15 major platforms, among them Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, TikTok and X.

Orrick’s June review, which also reports that arrests have been announced under the Act’s criminal provisions, puts civil penalties of $53,088 per violation for noncompliant platforms, and says the FTC had by then issued warning letters to a dozen companies. The same review flags a gap in the statute that platforms are still working through: what counts as reasonable effort to find identical copies of a reported image has not been defined with precision. For platforms, that ambiguity cuts both ways: a complaint can allege that a copy was missed, and the company’s defense would turn on what search it ran after the original request arrived. Nothing in the sources read for this report says how the FTC intends to measure that effort, only that identical copies fall inside the 48-hour obligation.

Victim advocates treat the portal as the second half of a two-step process, with the platform’s own reporting form first and the federal complaint second. RAINN’s president and founder, Scott Berkowitz, said the organization’s guide links to each major platform’s reporting form so survivors can start the 48-hour takedown clock, and its anniversary statement lists the FTC portal as the next stop when a platform fails to comply.

What the FTC pages read for this report do not show is how the agency handles the complaints it receives. The alert and the May announcement describe the intake and the penalties, and neither reports a count of complaints or a first enforcement action against a platform for missing the 48-hour deadline, so the portal’s results remain an open question.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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