A PornHub banner from the 2023 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo. | Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Porn sites Pornhub, XVideos, and Stripchat face stricter requirements to verify the ages of their users after being officially designated as “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOPs) under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA). In a press release today, the European Commission said the three sites “fulfil the threshold of 45 million average monthly users in the EU.” The sites will have to comply with the DSA obligations by February 2024.
Being designated as a VLOP means the sites will also have to conduct risk assessments and mitigate the spread of illegal content like child sexual abuse material and deepfake pornography. There are also transparency requirements like being subject to external audits, publishing transparency reports…