An explicit image of a child online: what the FTC says to do first

According to the Federal Trade Commission, an explicit image of a child, including an AI-generated deepfake, is treated as a serious crime whether a real photo was taken or a fake one was built. The image does not need to be real for the law to apply.

That single fact changes how a parent should respond. The instinct is to go straight to the platform and ask for the image to come down. The FTC's sequence puts law enforcement first, removal second.

Report the person first

Three contact points are listed. A local police department. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline, reachable at 1-800-843-5678, where trained analysts pass the report to the right law enforcement agency. The FBI, by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI or visiting a local field office. Reporting here does two things at once: it opens a criminal case, and it creates a record that can support the removal request that follows.

Then force the takedown

The Take It Down Act requires covered platforms to give parents an easy way to request removal of an explicit image of a child. Where a parent already has an account on the platform, the report option usually sits on or near the image itself, often behind the three dots in the image's upper right corner. Without an account, the platform's help center carries the same instructions.

The 48-hour window is the mechanism worth understanding. A covered platform has 48 hours to act on the request. If it does not, the next step is not to keep asking the platform. It is to report the platform itself to the FTC, at TakeItDown.ftc.gov. The clock exists so a parent has a fixed point to escalate from, rather than waiting indefinitely on a platform that is not responding.

Stop the image spreading elsewhere

NCMEC's Take It Down service works differently again. It creates a hash, a kind of digital fingerprint of the image, and uses that fingerprint to help suppress the same image from appearing on other sites. This step does not depend on any single platform's cooperation; it is built to work across platforms at once, which is what makes it useful once an image has already started moving.

What the sequence shows is that no single report covers everything. Police and NCMEC handle the criminal side. The platform's own report tool and the 48-hour rule handle removal from the site where it appeared. The hash-based service handles the spread beyond that one site. A parent who only does one of the three has not finished the job.

Guidance and links for each step are collected at TakeItDown.ftc.gov.