EU Charges Pornhub and Major Adult Sites with Breaching Digital Services Act

The European Commission on Thursday issued preliminary findings against four major adult content platforms — Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos — charging them with breaching the Digital Services Act by failing to prevent minors from accessing pornographic content. The Commission concluded that the platforms' existing protective measures — including single-click self-declaration of age, page blurring, content warnings, and "adults only" labels — do not constitute effective barriers and are easily circumvented. Regulators accused the companies of prioritizing commercial and reputational concerns over systemic risks to children. The platforms now face potential fines of up to 6 (% of global annual turnover) — maximum DSA fine for confirmed violations of their global annual turnover if the preliminary violations are confirmed. On the same day, the Commission opened a separate formal investigation into Snapchat over child safety risks including grooming and illegal goods sales.

Self-declaration clicks deemed wholly insufficient by Brussels The Commission's preliminary findings, the result of a 10-month investigation launched in May 2025, found that all four platforms allow access to explicit content after a user simply clicks to confirm they are over 18, without any verification that this is actually the case. Regulators determined that the companies did not use objective or comprehensive methodologies when assessing risks to minors using their services. In some cases, the Commission found that platforms distorted or entirely disregarded input from civil society organizations specializing in children's rights and age-verification tools. The findings also noted that the platforms gave greater weight to potential reputational damage to their businesses than to the protection of younger users. Henna Virkkunen, the Commission's Executive Vice-President for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, called for robust action. „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.” — Henna Virkkunen via Reuters „The message is very clear: if these pornographic platforms want to continue their activity in Europe, they must have measures in place to really verify users' ages.” — Henna Virkkunen via SudOuest.fr

Snapchat faces separate probe over grooming and illegal goods Separately, the Commission opened a formal investigation into Snapchat, the messaging application owned by the American group Snap Inc., over a distinct set of child safety concerns. According to reporting by the Associated Press, Brussels wants to verify whether Snapchat exposes minor users to manipulation for sexual purposes or recruitment for criminal activities, including by allowing adult users to pose as teenagers. The Commission will also examine whether the platform facilitates the sale of illegal products such as drugs and weapons, or products whose sale to minors is prohibited in the EU, such as alcohol and vapes. Snapchat, which reported 97 (million users in the EU) — Snapchat's EU user base at end of 2025 at the end of 2025, including more than 28 million in France alone, has so far relied on users self-reporting their age at registration. Unlike the four adult platforms, Snapchat has not been classified as "high risk" in the same category, but the investigation proceeds under the same DSA framework. The Digital Services Act applies to very large online platforms with more than 45 million monthly users in the EU. The Commission began its investigation into the four adult platforms in May 2025. The DSA requires platforms to take appropriate and proportionate measures to protect young people from harmful content, with the strictest obligations falling on the largest platforms.

EU developing privacy-preserving age verification app for six countries The Commission has called on all four adult platforms to implement privacy-preserving age-verification measures, meaning systems that confirm a user's age without transmitting personal identity data to the platform itself. The EU has developed an application for this purpose, which is set to become available in France from April before rolling out to Denmark, Greece, Italy, Spain, and other member states. The system requires users to verify their age once using a passport or identity card, after which the app generates a certificate that communicates only whether the visitor is above or below the relevant age threshold, with no further data passed to the platform. The solution is intended to be integrated into the future European Digital Identity Wallet. The four companies — Pornhub, owned by Cypriot group Aylo Freesites; Stripchat, a subsidiary of Cyprus-based Technius; XNXX, owned by Czech group NKL Associates; and XVideos, a unit of WebGroup Czech Republic — retain the right to inspect the Commission's investigative files, respond in writing to the preliminary findings, and propose remedial measures before any final sanctions are imposed. Critics have argued that the DSA enforcement process moves too slowly given the scale of minors' exposure to harmful content online.