Online regulators at the European Commission have opened an investigation into Pornhub and three other pornography sites, over suspected lax efforts to prevent children accessing their explicit content.
The EU’s executive arm announced it had opened formal inquiries into Pornhub, XNXX, Stripchat, and XVideos, for possible breaches of the union’s strict regulations of large online platforms.
The investigation will centre on suspected lax age verification checks used by the sites, where users simply have to click a pop-up stating they are at least 18 years of age, to access the websites.
The EU’s Digital Services Act, which came into force early last year, gives commission regulators powers to investigate the spread of harmful and illegal online content.
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Big online platforms found to be in breach of the tech regulations can be hit with large fines.
“Children should not have access to pornographic content. We suspect that these pornographic platforms are not properly assessing and mitigating risks stemming from their services and not effectively preventing kids from accessing adult content,” a commission spokesman said.
Existing age verification checks used by the sites were not seen as effective, he said.
The investigations into Pornhub and the other sites are expected to take several months at least. The inquiries may end in the commission fining the companies, or directing them to change their practices.
“We will now conduct an in-depth investigation and invite the four companies to co-operate throughout the process,” the commission spokesman said on Tuesday.
The commission is trying to tackle the age verification problem itself, by introducing an EU-wide “digital wallet”. The scheme would allow people to verify their identity when accessing services online.
A trial of the digital ID idea will begin this summer, while the commission works towards a wider implementation of the concept.
Separately, Pornhub received more than 7,000 reports about potential child sex abuse material being hosted on its website last year, according to an annual report required to be published to comply with the EU’s new digital regulations.
A further 1,200 complaints were flagged to the platform about possible non-consensual videos or other content on the website.
Some 100 videos or other pieces of content were removed by Pornhub over fears they depicted child sex abuse material, the report said.
Police in Germany made eight requests for information about users of the website, in connection with investigations into online child sexual abuse material.
