BRUSSELS — The European Commission has preliminarily found PornHub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos to be in breach of Digital Services Act provisions intended to shield minors from adult content.
In May 2025, the Commission began gathering evidence to determine whether the platforms were putting in place age verification tools to safeguard minors from adult content.
According to a statement dated Wednesday, that investigation by the Commission has now indicated that the four sites failed to sufficiently identify and assess the risks their platforms pose to minors accessing their services, and also failed to implement effective measures to prevent minors from accessing their services.
The statement reads, “Despite stating in their Terms of Services that their services are for adults only, all four platforms allow minors to access their platforms by a simple click confirming they are over 18. The Commission finds that ‘self-declaration’ is not an effective measure, and it also considers that additional mitigation measures, such as page blurring, content warnings and ‘Restricted to adults’ labels, deployed by all of these platforms, do not effectively prevent minors from accessing harmful content.”
It is unclear whether these findings refer only to measures in place at the time the investigation began, or whether they reflect the Commission’s assessment of the platforms’ current age assurance measures.
“At this stage, the Commission considers that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos need to implement privacy preserving age verification measures to protect children from harmful content,” the statement notes. ”These findings do not prejudge the final outcome of the investigation.”
XVideos, XNXX, PornHub and Stripchat will now have the opportunity to review the Commission’s investigation files, reply to the preliminary findings and/or “take measures to remedy the breaches.” If the Commission’s views are confirmed, it may issue fines of up to 6% of the total worldwide annual turnover of each provider, and/or impose penalty payments to compel compliance.
