Three pornographic sites have been designated as “very large online platforms” by European institutions under the European Union’s Digital Services Act, known as DSA. This means they will have new obligations when it comes to age verification and removing illegal content.
The European Commission said the three sites “reach the threshold of 45 million average monthly users in the EU.”
Sites will have to comply with the Digital Services Act obligations by February 2024, less than two months away.
“Greater accountability for their algorithms and processes”
Being designated as VLOP (Very large online platforms) means that these sites will also have to carry out risk assessments and mitigate the distribution of illegal content.
“I welcome the designations of Pornhub, XVideos and Stripchat as very large online platforms. This will allow for greater scrutiny and accountability of their algorithms and processes,” Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
The Commission announced a first set of 17 very large online platforms and two very large online search engines in April 2023. This list notably included Amazon, the Apple App Store, Facebook, Instagram, the name of Twitter), YouTube and Google Search. But this list did not include any pornography-specific services until then.
XVIdeos claims to have 160 million “average monthly recipients”
A service is considered a “very large” platform if it has at least 45 million monthly active users in the European Union.
XVIdeos said it has 160 million “average monthly recipients” of its service in the European Union. Pornhub claimed to have 33 million monthly users, but its inclusion in the list of new VLOPs means the EU doesn’t believe those numbers.
The designation of these sites comes amid growing efforts by authorities to impose stricter age verification on pornographic sites.
Work in France also on this subject
In France the government wishes to impose control, to which the CNIL nevertheless places conditions to ensure compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
To prevent access to X sites by minors, Docaposte announced last November that it was testing proof of age.