Take It Down

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has created a powerful tool to help children regain control. Today, the nation’s leading child protection organization is announcing a new tool to combat child sexual exploitation and help kids remove their nudes from the internet. The groundbreaking platform, aptly named, Take It Down, is available now and allows users from around the world to submit a report that can help remove online nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit photos and videos depicting a child under 18 years old. Meta provided initial funding to build the infrastructure for the program that NCMEC launched at the end of December 2022. Since then, more than 200 cases have been submitted.

A new public service announcement, created by award winning ad agency, VCCP, focuses on the theme of moving forward. This new PSA will appear on platforms that kids frequent to ensure they are receiving the message directly. We can’t go back and change what happened, but we can help you move forward.

Take It Down works by assigning a unique digital fingerprint, called a hash value, to specific images or videos. When tech platforms sign up to participate, they are provided these hash values so they can detect and remove the imagery on their public or unencrypted sites and apps. This all happens without the image or video ever leaving a device or anyone viewing it.