The European Commission is investigating Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos for suspected breaches of the Digital Services Act (DSA).
As well as this, the European Board for Digital Services, is taking coordinated action against smaller pornographic platforms. This aims to reinforce the Commission’s effort to protect children from harmful content online, both regarding very large adult platforms supervised by the Commission and smaller ones that fall under the supervision of the Digital Services Coordinators.
The Commission’s investigations into Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos focus on the risks for the protection of minors, including those linked to the absence of effective age verification measures. The Commission has preliminarily found that the platforms do not offer:
- Appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security for minors, in particular age verification tools to safeguard minors from adult content.
- Risk assessment and mitigation measures of any negative effects on the rights of the child, the mental and physical well-being of users, and to prevent minors from accessing adult content, notably via appropriate age verification tools.
Protecting young users online is one of the key enforcement priorities under the DSA. Online platforms must ensure that the rights and best interests of children are central to the design and functioning of their services. If proven, failure to comply with these requirements would constitute infringements of the DSA. The opening of formal proceedings does not prejudge its outcome and is without prejudice to any other proceeding that the Commission may decide to initiate on any other conduct that may constitute an infringement under the DSA.
The Commission will now carry out an in-depth investigation as a matter of priority and will continue to gather evidence, which can include sending additional requests for information, conducting interviews or inspections.
The opening of formal proceedings empowers the Commission to take further enforcement steps, such as adopting interim measures and non-compliance decisions. The Commission is also empowered to accept commitments made by Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos to remedy the issues raised in the proceedings.
This follows similar investigations in the UK by Ofcom under the Online Safety Act 2023 and a wider age assurance project.
