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Adult content platforms Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos have been charged with breaching European Union rules by letting children access pornographic content on their sites, EU regulators said on Thursday, which could lead to hefty fines.
The charges follow a 10-month-long investigation under the bloc’s Digital Services Act, which requires large online platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content.
“Children are accessing adult content at increasingly younger ages and these platforms must put in place robust, privacy-preserving and effective measures to keep minors off their services,” EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said in a statement.
Companies risk fines as much as six per cent of their global annual turnover if found guilty of Digital Services Act breaches.
The European Commission, charged with enforcing the act, said the companies did not use objective and thorough methodologies to assess the risks to children accessing their services.
It accused Pornhub, owned by Aylo Freesites, Stripchat, a subsidiary of Cyprus’s Technius, XNXX, owned by Czech group NKL Associates, and WebGroup Czech Republic unit XVideos of being more worried about their reputations than societal risks to minors.
The regulator also took issue with the companies’ self-declaration tool which allows users to access their platforms with a simple click confirming they are over 18.
It said this and measures such as page blurring and content warnings were not effective to stop children from accessing their sites.
The Commission said that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos need to implement privacy preserving age verification measures to protect children from harmful content.
Snapchat also under scrutiny
Also on Thursday, the EU’s executive commission said it was opening a formal investigation into Snapchat under the Digital Services Act over concerns the platform isn’t doing enough to protect kids from risks such as increased vulnerability to child predators or recruitment by criminals.
The European Commission said that Snapchat requires users to be at least 13 to use the platform but it suspected that the company’s “age assurance” system is “insufficient” at keeping young users off.
A Los Angeles jury has found Meta and YouTube liable in a landmark lawsuit claiming the companies knew their products were dangerous and addictive to children. A New Mexico jury ruled against Meta in a similar case earlier this week.
Regulators said the system is also not properly checking whether a user is under 17, which it needs to do in order to give them an “age appropriate” experience. They also worried that age checking systems aren’t preventing adults from posing as minors.
Snapchat said in a statement it has “fully co-operated” with the Commission by “engaging proactively, transparently and working in good faith to meet the DSA’s high safety standards — and we will continue to do so throughout this investigation,” adding that user safety is a top priority.
The decision also comes on the heels of major rulings in the U.S. Meta and YouTube were found liable in a landmark social media addiction trial in Los Angeles, after another jury earlier in the week found Meta violated New Mexico state rules meant to protect children from harm.
