After conducting a risk assessment, the European Commission has found that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX
and XVideos were in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) for failing to protect minors from being exposed to pornographic content.
The Commission’s preliminary findings are part of the European Commission’s formal proceedings launched against these four platforms under the DSA in May 2025. The Commissions used the 2025 DSA Guidelines on the protection of minors to evaluate the platform’s compliance with the obligation to ensure privacy, safety and security for minors.
The Commission has preliminarily found that the websites did not adequately identify and assess the risks that their platforms pose to minors accessing their services. Where risks were identified, the platforms did not conduct a thorough assessment due to their failure to use objective and thorough methodologies. As an example, the Commission found that the assessment disproportionately emphasised business-centric concerns, such as reputational damage, rather than focusing on the risk to minors.
The findings also show that Stripchat, XVideos and XNXX misrepresented or did not consider meetings with civil society organisations specialising in children’s rights and age assurance tools.
Additionally, these platforms have been found to have failed to implement effective measures to prevent minors from accessing their services. Despite stating in Terms of Services that their services are only for adults, all four platforms allow minors to access their platforms.
The Commission considers ‘self-declaration’ as an insufficient and ineffective measure and that other mitigation measures such as page blurring, content warnings, ‘restricted to adults’ labels, do not effectively prevent minors from accessing harmful content. The DSA guidelines consider age verification as a proportionate and effective measure to mitigate risk of minors accessing adult content services.
The Commission is developing an EU Age Verification app, which will be the reference standard as an age verification method. The app is currently being tested with Member States, online platforms and other third parties. A coordinated action against non-compliant smaller pornographic platforms is also being carried out by the national Digital Services Coordinators responsible for supervising them. This aims to ensure the DSA is enforced consistently across all platforms.
XVideos, XNXX, PornHub and Stripchat now have a right of reply. The platforms can take measures to remedy the breaches. In parallel, the European Board for Digital Services will be consulted.
If the Commission’s views are ultimately confirmed, the Commission may issue a non-compliance decision, which can trigger a fine proportionate to the infringement of up to 6% of the total worldwide annual turnover of the provider. The Commission can also impose periodic penalty payments to compel a platform to comply.
