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.
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00:00 The European Commission is labeling three big porn sites as very large online platforms.
00:06 And it demands that they take more action towards deleting illegal content and respecting
00:11 human rights.
00:12 The commission says Pornhub, StripChat and Xvideos have more than 45 million European
00:17 users, so they must apply the highest levels of standards.
00:21 Well, the consequences are that we look even more carefully and more closely and that they
00:26 have specific obligations that not all other platforms have and the very important one
00:30 is they have to analyze and mitigate their systemic risks.
00:33 And here we speak about protection of minors, but also illegal materials like child sexual
00:38 abuse material or other content as revenge porn or deepfake porn that need to be mitigated
00:44 or taken down from the platform.
00:46 The decision comes after the adoption of the Digital Services Act, a milestone EU law regulating
00:52 online content.
00:55 The legislation comes into force on the 17th of February next year and those porn sites
00:59 concerned have by April to adopt the highest standards of rules in terms of removal of
01:04 illegal content.
01:06 Euronews reached out to the platforms concerned by the decision.
01:10 One of them, Pornhub, replied questioning the methodology of the European Commission.
01:15 They indicated that Pornhub only has 33 million average monthly visitors in the EU, so it
01:20 doesn`t reach the block`s threshold.
01:23 The commission has already declared 19 sites as very large online platforms, including
01:28 Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter.
01:30 All of them have to adopt enhanced standards to protect users.
01:34 Thank you.