Take It Down Act checker

How to use the Take It Down Act checker

1. Say who can use the site. Pick whether anyone can visit or sign up, or whether it is only for your staff or a closed team.
2. Say who posts. Pick whether visitors or members can post their own photos, videos or posts, only leave comments, or cannot post at all.
3. Say how central it is. If members can post, a third question asks whether that is the main thing your site offers.
4. Answer the intimate content question. Say whether publishing or hosting intimate or adult content is a regular part of the business.
5. Read the result. It shows likely covered, grey area, likely excluded or likely not covered. Covered and grey area results add a short list of what to set up.
6. Check another site. Press Start over to clear the answers.

How the checker decides

The removal duty in the Act applies to a “covered platform”. That is a website, online service or app that serves the public and mainly provides a forum for content from its users, such as messages, videos, images and audio. It also applies to services whose regular business is hosting or publishing intimate content.

Three kinds of service are left out:

• Broadband providers.
• Email.
• Sites made mostly of content the owner picks, where user chat or comments are only incidental. This is the exclusion most WordPress sites care about.

Nothing in the definition depends on traffic or company size. It turns on what the site is for. The checker follows that test in this order:

• A site that is not open to the public does not serve the public, so it is likely not covered.
• A site that regularly publishes or hosts intimate content is likely covered, whatever else it offers.
• A site where only your team publishes is not a forum for user content.
• Comments under your own articles are the incidental kind of user content the Act leaves out.
• Member posts as the main thing your site offers fit the definition. Member posts as one important part sit near the line, so the result is a grey area.

Common WordPress sites

Here is how the test plays out for common WordPress sites. Treat it as a starting point, not a ruling.

Type of site	Likely covered?	Why
Forum (bbPress, wpForo)	Yes	Members’ posts are the point of the site
Membership community (BuddyPress, BuddyBoss, PeepSo)	Yes	Profiles, photos and activity come from users
Site built around user uploads (galleries, classifieds, dating)	Yes	User photos and videos are the main content
Marketplace with vendor listings	A closer call	Vendors write much of the content; ask a lawyer
Business blog with comments	Usually not	You write the posts; comments sit beside them
WooCommerce store with product reviews	Usually not	Your products are the content; reviews are incidental

What to do if your site is covered

A covered site needs a removal process. The law and the FTC guidance ask for four things:

1. A clear notice. Explain in plain language how to ask you to remove an image. The FTC suggests linking it from your home page and wherever user images appear.
2. A way to send requests. Do not limit it to people with an account. A form or an email address works.
3. Removal within 48 hours. The clock runs from when your site receives a valid request, and weekends count.
4. Known identical copies. Make reasonable efforts to find and remove them on your site too.

Then tell the person what you did, and keep a dated record of each request. The FTC has enforced these rules since May 19, 2026, and puts the civil penalty at $53,088 per violation.

Even if your site falls outside the definition, a simple way to ask for removal costs little and helps the person in the photo. The Take It Down Act summary covers the four parts of a valid request, where copies hide on a WordPress site and a full setup checklist. More tools like this are on the website tools page.

Sources

Built by Rasel Hakkani, WordPress developer at Swift Web Dev. The questions and results follow the platform section of the law and the FTC business guidance.

• 47 U.S.C. § 223a, the platform section of the law (Cornell Legal Information Institute)
• Complying with the Take It Down Act (FTC business guidance)
• FTC begins enforcing the Take It Down Act (FTC press release, May 19, 2026)

Last checked: November 2026. Found a wrong answer? Tell us and we will fix it.