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President Donald Trump signed the TAKE IT DOWN Act into law on Monday, strengthening federal protections for victims of revenge porn and AI-generated sexual images. The bill, introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), makes it illegal to knowingly publish or threaten to share nonconsensual intimate imagerywhether real or generated by artificial intelligencewithout the persons consent. It also requires tech platforms to remove such images within 48 hours of being notified and to take steps to eliminate duplicate content. Previously, federal law only banned the creation or distribution of realistic, AI-generated explicit images of children, while protections for adults varied by state. As a result, laws differed in how the crime was classified and penalized, leading to inconsistent criminal prosecutions. Some victims also struggled to have images taken down from websites. This legislation, which garnered overwhelming bipartisan support, marks the first federal law aimed at protecting adult victims. Now, people who post such content and are convicted could face penalties and prison time. The Federal Trade Commission could also sue tech companies for not complying with the law, Axios reports. “We must provide victims of online abuse with the legal protections they need when intimate images are shared without their consent, especially now that deepfakes are creating horrifying new opportunities for abuse,” Klobuchar said in a statement after the bill passed in Congress. “These images can ruin lives and reputations. But now that our bipartisan legislation is becoming law, victims will be able to have this material removed from social media platforms, and law enforcement can hold perpetrators accountable.” Tech giants have expressed broad support for the bill. Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, joined Snap, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, X, Amazon, Bumble, and Match Group in backing the legislation. “Having an intimate imagereal or AI-generatedshared without consent can be devastating, and Meta developed and backs many efforts to help prevent it,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement in March. First lady Melania Trump has also championed the TAKE IT DOWN Act, lobbying lawmakers and speaking with teenage victims. She appeared alongside Trump at the bill’s signing. “Its heartbreaking to witness young teens, especially girls, grappling with the overwhelming challenges posed by malicious online content like deepfakes,” the first lady said in March. “Every young person deserves a safe online space to express themselves free without the looming threat of exploitation or harm.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Klarna just announced its first quarter 2025 financial results, and they show that a larger chunk of customers are buying now and not paying later. This morning, the Swedish buy now, pay later (BNPL) fintech company gave consumers a look at its performance for the first three months of 2025. The news came in the form of a press release and an accompanying AI-generated video of CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski (likely as a play to emphasize Klarnas all-in approach to AI.) In the video, Siemiatkowskis look-alike shared that Klarna has started the year strong, hitting 100 active users in the first quarter and $701 million in revenue, a 15% year-over-year increase. But theres a caveat: Although Klarna has grown this year, its also doubled its net losses from $47 million in Q1 2024 to $99 million in Q1 2025. One factor driving the spike in losses appears to be the fact that more of Klarnas consumer base, which relies on the companys fast-credit loans to pay for goods in bite-size installments, is failing to pay off their purchases. The results come as, amid a global trade war and increasing economic uncertainty, U.S. consumers are turning to BNPL services to pay for everything from electronics to groceries. Buy now, don’t pay later? A University of Michigan survey, released last week, found that U.S. consumer sentiment dropped to its second-lowest reading on record this month amid fears that the Trump administrations tariffs will lead to a spike in inflation. Between tariff concerns and the current elevated cost of living, its been a difficult few months for American consumers. Now, it seems, Klarnas customers are beginning to show the strain. According to a press release detailing its Q1 results, Klarnas consumer credit losses have jumped 17%from $117 million last year to $136 million this yearas more users fail to make their payments on time. That data is on track with an April survey from LendingTree that found that 41% of BNPL users in the U.S. paid late over the last 12 months, up from 34% a year ago. Still, for BNPL providers like Klarna, its not a bad time to be in the business. A report from Grand View Research found the U.S. BNPL market is expected to see a 26.1% annual compound growth rate between 2023 and 2030. And, based on the aforementioned LendingTree data, that market prediction is already beginning to play out: Consumers are increasingly relying on BNPL services for quotidian purchases like groceries and food delivery. (As of that survey, 25% of users had purchased groceries with a BNPL loan, up 14% from 2024.) Klarna, specifically, has recently announced major deals with DoorDash, Walmart, and eBay to cash in on the growing demand for BNPL services. Experts warn that this reliance on BNPL is a worrisome sign. Last month, Matt Schulz, LendingTrees chief consumer finance analyst, told CNBC that high interest rates, inflation, and tariff uncertainty were leading consumers to look for ways to extend their budget however they can. Still, in the fintech world, Klarna is becoming a more prominent player. Investors are waiting with bated breath for the company to move ahead with an IPO, a process that Klarna moved to begin in March but ultimately put on hold in order to await a clearer tariff outlook.
Category:
E-Commerce
The U.S. Supreme Court let Donald Trump’s administration on Monday strip temporary protected status from Venezuelans living in the United States that had been granted under his predecessor Joe Biden, as the Republican president moves to ramp up deportations as part of his hard-line approach to immigration. The court granted the Justice Department’s request to lift San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen’s order that had halted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to terminate the deportation protection conferred to Venezuelans under the temporary protected status, or TPS, program. The court’s brief order was unsigned, as is typical when the justices act on an emergency request. The court, however, left open the door to any challenges by migrants if the administration seeks to invalidate work permits or other TPS-related documents that were issued to expire in October 2026, which is the end of the TPS period extended by Biden. The Department of Homeland Security has said about 348,202 Venezuelans were registered under Biden’s 2023 TPS designation. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member of the court to publicly dissent from the decision. The action came in a legal challenge by plaintiffs including some of the TPS recipients and the National TPS Alliance advocacy group, who said Venezuela remains an unsafe country. Trump, who returned to the presidency in January, has pledged to deport record numbers of migrants in the United States illegally and has taken actions to strip certain migrants of temporary legal protections, expanding the pool of possible deportees. The TPS program is a humanitarian designation under U.S. law for countries stricken by war, natural disaster, or other catastrophe, giving recipients living in the United States deportation protection and access to work permits. The designation can be renewed by the U.S. homeland security secretary. The U.S. government under Biden, a Democrat, twice designated Venezuela for TPS, in 2021 and 2023. In January, days before Trump returned to office, the Biden administration announced an extension of the programs to October 2026. Noem, a Trump appointee, rescinded the extension and moved to end the TPS designation for a subset of Venezuelans who benefited from the 2023 designation. Chen ruled that Noem violated a federal law that governs the actions of agencies. The judge also said the revocation of the TPS status appeared to have been predicated on “negative stereotypes” by insinuating the Venezuelan migrants were criminals. “Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes,” Chen wrote, adding that Venezuelan TPS holders were more likely to hold bachelor’s degrees than American citizens and less likely to commit crimes than the general U.S. population. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on April 18 declined the administration’s request to pause the judge’s order. Justice Department lawyers in their Supreme Court filing said Chen had “wrested control of the nation’s immigration policy” away from the government’s executive branch, headed by Trump. “The court’s order contravenes fundamental Executive Branch prerogatives and indefinitely delays sensitive policy decisions in an area of immigration policy that Congress recognized must be flexible, fast-paced, and discretionary,” they wrote. The plaintiffs told the Supreme Court that granting the administration’s request “would strip work authorization from nearly 350,000 people living in the U.S., expose them to deportation to an unsafe country, and cost billions in economic losses nationwide.” The State Department currently warns against travel to Venezuela “due to the high risk of wrongful detentions, terrorism, kidnapping, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure.” The Trump administration in April also terminated TPS for thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians in the United States. Those actions are not part of the current case. In a separate case on Friday, the Supreme Court kept in place its block on Trump’s deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime, faulting his administration for seeking to remove them without adequate legal process. Andrew Chung, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
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