Despite their popularity, Pornhub, Stripchat and Xvideos, three of the biggest porn websites, do not want to be considered very large online platforms in Europe. They are contesting this status which requires them to comply with new requirements under the European regulation on digital services.
We are familiar with the Digital Markets Regulation (DMA), perhaps less so its cousin, the Digital Services Regulation (DSA). This text, which came into force last summer, gives 19 very large platforms new obligations in terms of transparency and moderation.
Read DSA: the moment of truth has come for the digital giants… but also for the European Union
And among these platforms, there are three pornographic video sites: Pornhub, Stripchat and Xvideos. According to the European Commission, these platforms reach or exceed the gauge of 45 million monthly users in the EU. Beyond this threshold, they must integrate access blocking mechanisms for minors, publish a directory of advertisements published on their sites, or even communicate on their recommendation systems.
These platforms had until the beginning of March to challenge their status before the General Court of the European Union… and that’s what they didrevealed Politico.
Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, explains that the Commission made an error in its calculations: the site has 33 million visitors each month in the EU, he claims. Stripchat previously reported a total of 32 million visitors. As for Xvideos, it revealed that it had 85 million Internet users per month on average, therefore beyond the DSA threshold. For the latter, it therefore seems quite difficult to evade the regulations.
On the Brussels side, we stand ready to defend our positions and our method of calculation. These three sites are not the only ones to challenge the status of very large platforms, this is also the case for Amazon and Zalando. But while waiting for the court decision, everyone will have to respect the obligations of the DSA.
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Source :
Politico