SB 981: Sexually explicit digital images.

Existing law generally regulates social media platforms, including by requiring a social media platform to provide, in a mechanism that is reasonably accessible to users, a means for a user who is a California resident to report material to the social media platform that the user reasonably believes is, among other things, child sexual abuse material.

This bill would require a social media platform to provide a mechanism that is reasonably accessible to a reporting user who is a California resident who has an account with the social media platform to report sexually explicit digital identity theft to the social media platform. The bill would define sexually explicit digital identity theft to mean the posting of covered material on a social media platform and would define covered material to mean material that meets certain criteria, including that the material is an image or video created or altered through digitization that would appear to a reasonable person to be an image or video of an intimate body part of an identifiable person or an identifiable person engaged in certain sexual acts, and that the reporting person is the person depicted in the material and did not consent to the use of the reporting persons likeness in the material. The bill would also require a social media platform to immediately remove a reported instance of sexually explicit digital identity theft from being publicly viewable on the social media platform if the social media platform determines there is a reasonable basis to believe the reported sexually explicit digital identity theft is sexually explicit digital identity theft, as prescribed.