Adult sites fail to protect minors, ‘self-declaration’ proves to be ineffective

Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos fail to protect minors from exposure to pornographic content on their websites.

In May 2025, the European Commission launched an investigation into Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos for allegedly doing too little to tackle illegal and harmful content on their sites.

On Thursday, the executive branch of the European Union announced its preliminary findings, which are based on risk assessment reports, internal data and documents, replies to information requests, and expert interviews.

The Commission’s main conclusion: the adult websites neglect to protect minors from pornographic content, which constitutes an infringement of the Digital Services Act (DSA).

According to the European Commission, Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos don’t use “objective and thorough methodologies” to conduct a risk assessment. Instead, the sites are more focused on how to prevent reputational damage rather than risks to minors.

In addition, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos refused to attend meetings with civil society organizations specialized in children’s rights and the implementation of age verification tools.

The European Commission also found that the adult websites fail to implement effective measures to prevent minors from accessing their services. All sites display a prompt to users saying they’re over 18. By simply clicking ‘agree,’ everybody, including minors, can enter the websites.

This self-declaration isn’t an effective measure to protect children from adult content. The same goes for additional mitigation measures, such as page blurring, content warnings, and ‘Restricted to adults’ labels, the Commission argues.

“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,” Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, says in a statement.

Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos now have the right to respond to the European Commission’s preliminary findings. They can also decide to implement measures to remedy the DSA violations.

If the Commission’s preliminary findings become final, this could trigger an administrative fine, which could go as high as 6% of a company’s global annual turnover.