The European Commission has preliminarily found that Pornhub and other porn sites are failing to protect minors from being exposed to pornographic content on their sites.
The Commission has ordered some of the sites to implement age verification measures or run the risk of racking up multi-million euro fines for allowing children to access their platforms.
In a statement, EU authorities said the Commission’s preliminary findings indicate that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos did not diligently identify and assess the risks that their platforms pose to minors accessing their services.
Moreover, the findings show that in their risk assessments Stripchat, Xvideos, and XNXX misrepresented or did not consider their meetings with civil society organisations specialising in children’s rights and age assurance tools.
The Commission also preliminarily found that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos have failed to implement effective measures to prevent minors from accessing their services, therefore, failing to protect minors’ rights and wellbeing.
The report said that 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.
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, it said.
Concerns have also been flagged about children accessing “vile” pornography through social media platforms. The head of Northern Ireland’s child safeguarding organisation told MPs in the summer that the problem was “just beyond belief” as she called for greater intervention.
Parties such as Aontú in the Republic have pointed to increases in rape, sexual violence and domestic abuse in recent years. The party has claimed there is a link between the spike in sexual violence in Ireland and the proliferation of violent pornography amongst children, claiming that all the Government have done about the issue in the last five years is “shrug their shoulders.”
Last year, Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris said that online violent pornography was driving much of the violence.
Six years ago, the party tabled the Protection of Children (Online Pornographic Material) Bill 2020, which it said would prevent Internet pornography firms from selling their material to children.
“The government has refused to support the Bill. They have refused to even acknowledge the science that shows the clear link between violence against women and violent pornography. The government talks about preventing violence against women but they refuse to tackle one of the biggest drivers of it,” Aontú leader and Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín previously said.
Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, said on Friday: “In the EU, online platforms have a responsibility. 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. Today, we are taking another action to enforce the DSA – ensuring that children are properly protected online, as they have the right to be.”