Pornosites Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos must prove in the coming period that they are doing enough to keep minors off their platforms. The European Commission has strong suspicions that the sites are not complying with legal rules and has launched investigations.
Children under the age of eighteen are not allowed to visit the porn websites. Such sites must therefore put up barriers to ensure that minors cannot still look around. The Commission says it has already determined that the websites do not yet carry out sufficient age checks to protect children.
Brussels believes that the websites may not comply with the European tech law DSA. European Commissioner Henna Virkkunen (Technology, Security and Democracy) says that according to that law, the internet must be a safe environment where children can talk and play with each other. “Our priority is to protect minors and allow them to navigate the web safely,” she says.
The websites have been under scrutiny by the European Commission for some time. Pornhub, XVideos and Stripchat were already warned a year ago that they need to do more to check the ages of users. In addition, the platforms must also better check which videos are on their websites.
Reliable age verification, while safeguarding user privacy, is a problem. Young people often find a way to get to the websites anyway. The European Commission is working on a technical way to solve this, so that adults can prove that they are older than eighteen years without providing further personal data. An app that can arrange this should be available next summer.