Platforms now have 48 hours to pull explicit deepfakes once a victim asks, FTC says

Forty-eight hours is the clock the Federal Trade Commission says now runs on any social network, messaging app or photo-sharing service that is told about an explicit image made without the subject’s consent. A valid request from the person pictured starts it, and by the end of it the platform has to remove the image and any known identical copies.

The FTC restated the rule in a consumer alert dated Oct. 1, 2026, which also pointed readers to a reporting portal at TakeItDown.ftc.gov and told young people not to share explicit images or deepfakes, even as a joke. For children, the alert adds two further steps: refuse any request for intimate images, and report concerning content to a trusted adult. The alert’s message is that the removal right works alongside prevention, not instead of it.

The statute’s notice-and-removal clock

The duty comes from Section 3 of the TAKE IT DOWN Act, and it is not new this month. The FTC’s press release on May 19, 2026 said the agency had begun enforcing the law that day, one year after it was signed. Section 3 requires covered platforms to set up a way for people to ask for removal of nonconsensual intimate images and to take the content down within 48 hours of a valid request, along with known identical copies.

The FTC’s Oct. 1 consumer alert puts the same rule in plain terms for the public: platforms must remove the image, and known identical copies, within 48 hours of the request. The FTC’s compliance guidance for businesses explains the reach. The law applies to nonconsensual intimate real photos and videos as well as digital forgeries, which the agency describes as images created or altered with software, an app or artificial intelligence. Platforms are also expected to make reasonable efforts to find identical copies, even when the person who reported the original did not point to them, and the guidance recommends that platforms assign a tracking number to each request so that victims and law enforcement can follow its status.

Real images, digital forgeries and who files

Coverage in the statute is not limited to adults or to children. A May consumer alert from the FTC says the law reaches real images, digitally altered images and AI-generated deepfakes, and that a person can file on their own behalf, for a child, or for someone who has given permission. The request goes through the platform’s own process rather than to the FTC.

The law firm Wiley, in its compliance alert, reads the statute as imposing three duties: a notice-and-takedown process, clear and conspicuous notice of that process, and removal within 48 hours. It also reports that the covered-platform definition reaches websites and apps that primarily host user-generated content, including nonprofit services, while excluding broadband providers and email.

The FTC’s guidance and its consumer alert both rest on one phrase, a valid request, and neither reduces it to a single form. A report that falls short of validity does not start the clock, which is why the agency’s advice to victims is to use the platform’s removal process first.

Enforcement since May 19 and the $53,088 penalty

The enforcement side is where the 48-hour figure gets its force. In announcing the start of enforcement, FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson credited First Lady Melania Trump’s dedication for the law’s passage and said that in the age of AI anyone can be targeted, which becomes even more appalling when children are involved. Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote in a May 19 business blog post that the agency would check whether platforms have clear removal processes and whether they actually take content down in time, and that violators may face civil penalties of $53,088 per violation.

The FTC opened TakeItDown.ftc.gov for people to report platforms that fail to remove content within 48 hours, cannot be found to have a removal process, or have a broken one. According to the agency, every report counts and helps hold platforms accountable.

Ferguson also wrote to 15 companies, among them Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Automattic, Bumble, Discord, Match Group, Meta, Microsoft, Pinterest, Reddit, SmugMug, Snapchat, TikTok and X. The agency’s warning letters followed on May 20 and went to 12 websites offering nudify tools, telling them that they appeared to violate the law by lacking a removal mechanism and urging them to come into compliance immediately. Ferguson said in that release that platforms no longer have any excuses.

No enforcement action under Section 3 has been announced in the sources reviewed for this article, which leaves the first penalty case, and the dollar figure a court or the FTC attaches to a missed 48-hour deadline, as the unanswered part of the story.

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

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