Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos will need to abide by the European Union’s strictest digital regulations after they were designated “very large online platforms” (VLOPs) by the EU executive on Wednesday.
The three adult content companies join the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Google and Elon Musk’s X on the bloc’s list of platforms with more than 45 million average monthly users in the EU.
Brussels will now be able to police the sites’ compliance with its strictest set of rules under the landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), including on protecting minors and addressing the dissemination of illegal content.
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So, they expect users to provide a piece of ID to access porn? What a massive breach of privacy. Imagine a data leak, they will be able to tell who whatches what kind of porn. Do you want the world to know all your kinks? And I absolutely do not trust a porn site to keep my ID safe and secure. This is just a way to get porn sites out of EU because they know that no one will be giving their info even if you are over 18.
France almost had this, but with the government’s auth platform (FranceConnect) acting as a third party to confirm the user’s age without giving away their identity to the site.
Which would require me to trust the government with my porn preferences. Yeah, what could go wrong.
For that reason go for the extra spicy stuff, no one will believe you are into clown p0rn.
I like this idea.
In many of the conservative-run US states this is already the case
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This is an issue for parents, not governments.
In some countries, parents elect governments
Yeah and the sky appears blue, who gives a fuck? It is a parent by parent decision not the decision of whoever got the most votes by parents to run the gov
Yeah I’ll take parental responsibility advice from a yank when your kids are more likely to reach adult literacy than witness a school shooting
How about you raise your own kids instead fucking up everything for the rest of us because you’re too lazy to set up restrictions on your kids phones.
My kids don’t have phones because it is possible to parent your children and also parent other people’s children 👍
I don’t think there will be any effective age verification systems, the law itself says that there is an exception to protect fundamental rights to privacy. Someone tries to do this every month and it invariably fails.
This will just lead to massive amounts of account sharing on these sites tho.
This is great news for niche porn sites and unregulated communities, and especially for sexual predators who used to have such a difficult time luring impressionable teens onto their creepy discord porn sharing communities because it was so easy to assess regular porn but now teens will have to learn how to navigate the tangled web of obscure fetish communities just to see a boob…
Though if they handle it sensibly it does make sense to ensure they have robust systems in place to remove illegal content including revenge porn and leaked nudes.
The very foundation of the Internet is fault tolerance. These blocks will have the effect of forcing people to use other methods. To reroute the block.
E.g. instead of verifying my ID I’ll simply use a VPN or visit a site that doesn’t have age verification.
Age verification was quite common in the late-90s for major porn sites. They’d ask for credit card numbers to prove your age. Which spawned a mass of programs to generate fake CC numbers to trick CC validation. At 16 and new to the Internet it was trivial for me to circumvent age-restricted content. I just visited non-age ID sites or used a CC faker.
This stuff will never work.
It will just make it a pain it the arse for users.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos will need to abide by the European Union’s strictest digital regulations after they were designated “very large online platforms” (VLOPs) by the EU executive on Wednesday.
The three adult content companies join the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Google and Elon Musk’s X on the bloc’s list of platforms with more than 45 million average monthly users in the EU.
Brussels will now be able to police the sites’ compliance with its strictest set of rules under the landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), including on protecting minors and addressing the dissemination of illegal content.
The move is an important step in Brussels’ bid to crack down on a notoriously deregulated industry, amid increasing concerns about lax age verification mechanisms and the circulation of child sexual abuse material and AI-generated revenge porn.
After initially refusing to publish its user numbers in February, French-owned XVideos confirmed in June that its monthly visits amounted to a staggering 160 million, and did not contest its designation as a VLOP.
A French bill passed in October allows the government to block pornographic sites that do not have sufficient age and identity verification measures to prevent minors from accessing their content.
The original article contains 655 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Looks like pirating content won’t just be for expensive streaming services yarrr
Wow… Just wow. I am convinced everyday eu is getting dumber and dumber.
To all those “bad EU” commentators: the European regulations in this area make sense. Parents or individuals have no chance against those huge companies.
And most eu regulations helped the US citizens too. I just throw in apple and usb c
To all the brain dead takes like this: no, forcing through regulation users to provide a government digital id when they want to access adult entertainment is not a good idea even if it is done to protect the children.
There are ways to do anonymous authentication methods. Just because companies want to it an claim otherwise it is not true. I was involved in building such tools.
Also, just because those sites host porn, should they be treated differently then other companies?
There is a good reason for THIS EU law. Others are utterly bullshit, but have a look on social media. Look at those boys, yes boys, 12 years and younger, that fall for this alpha male bullshit, or the racist, right-wing propaganda. It is reasonable to protect kids from such influences. And laws, forbidding kids younger then x to use suge sites, must be enforceable.
EDIT: For anonymous age verification: The German ID van be used for such things: it is nfc, your mobile phone can be the reader, or you buy an nfc reader for your pc. The client software is open source, and it sends only the requested data. For example “older then X”.
An such a system is to be rolled out (or maybe even done?) In the whole EU
You know what else works? Parents actually paying attention to their kids web activity
By what means? Install Spyware on the kids device? Spyware that may have vulnerabilities and can lead to even greater risks of the kids? Smart idea …
There is no such thing as anonymous age verification.
The verification process using the German eID is. It is cryptologic secured, no middle man and the site owner only gets the information, if the age limit is fulfilled. Just because you can not imagine it means not that it does not exist.
And no, you don’t can trust the government on such things. That is why the software stack is open source and the functionality can be verified by the citizens. The CCC was involved to verify this …
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So the little web companies still operating in the EU will left and European citizens will need to use VPN services.
Ah yes, all those little web companies who have been labelled “very large online platforms”, wont someone speak up for the poor little billion dollar businesses?
I’m more into futanari than the EU’s brand of psycho/political masochistic roleplay. Being cockblocked by a major government just doesn’t do it for me.
No judgment, of course. Don’t mean to kinkshame you.
Or you will have to watch the government sponsored porn.
There already is a state-funded porn film in Germany:
https://lustery.com/pov/ffmm-straight-queer-doggy-bj-oral-orgasm-squirting-royale-en
It has won awards. There is a version of it on tube8 that doesnt require registration.
Meh, just block the EU, with a link to NordVPN.
These EU regulators need to understand that whatever firewall rules they establish for their teenage children will be the same rules implemented on the firewall at their nursing home.
Protonvpn or mullvad are better options
