The News
Pornhub and two other adult sites are challenging the European Union over the bloc’s move to impose age verification measures on users, multiple outlets reported Thursday.
The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) came into effect last August, targeting very large online platforms that the bloc believes could pose a “systemic risk” to society.
The landmark content moderation law targets sites with over 45 million monthly users (about 10% of the EU’s population) that primarily rely on ad revenue, requiring them to protect minors from harmful content, including misinformation and graphic images.
Pornhub is arguing that its European traffic falls below the 45 million monthly user threshold that would make it obligatory for the site to put in place age verification measures, like showing ID cards.
The platforms covered by the DSA, which include Amazon and Facebook-owner Meta, are required to pay the EU a supervisory fee for assistance in moderation and face steep fines if they fail to comply with the legislation.
The lawsuits have fueled wider discussions on the extent of the new law and the EU’s fight to combat harmful digital content, which could have free speech implications beyond the EU’s borders.
SIGNALS
Big Tech’s anti-DSA lawsuits ‘are about prioritizing profits over users’
It’s not just Pornhub that has sued over the EU’s law: tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Tiktok are “undermining” the bloc’s tech rules by suing over the DSA, Jan Penfrat of the European Digital Rights network, a not-for-profit association promoting rights and freedoms online, wrote for Euronews. Amazon, for instance, claims it does not fall under DSA regulations because its site does not primarily rely on ads for revenue, while Meta is challenging the fees paid to EU regulators, saying it is unfair that loss-making companies don’t have to pay, The Verge reported. While legal fees are just “pocket money” for these companies, Penfrat wrote, their defiance over regulations aimed at protecting the online public reveals how they protect “profits at the expense of their users,” adding that “It is time for Big Tech corporations to stop pouting and live up to their responsibility.”
What impact will the new law have beyond the EU?
Because most of the companies impacted by the DSA are headquartered in Silicon Valley, researchers agree that the new law will have an effect on tech policy beyond the EU’s borders – but what that impact will be is disputed. On the one hand, the DSA is pushing “the conversation around the safe and ethical creation of online technologies,” said Drexel University law professor Jordan Fischer, adding that platforms “may decide to apply its protections to all users.” On the other, companies such as Meta have already publicly said that DSA-compliance changes will only be seen by EU users. Both Meta and YouTube have slowed the labeling and removing of political misinformation in the U.S., apparently in retaliation for enhanced content moderation requirements abroad. Big Tech is almost “gleefully embracing these calls for deregulation of content, content policing, content moderation that are being espoused by folks like Elon Musk,” one propaganda researcher told The Nation.
Content moderation laws seen as threatening freedom of speech
Moves by the United States and the EU to tighten regulations around who can access perceived harmful content have drawn the ire of free-speech activists, who say the rules endanger users’ rights. At least seven states have now passed age-verification requirements for accessing online pornography, with Politico describing the requirements as “the most bipartisan policy in the country” — in one poll, 77% of respondents in swing states supported them. However, rather than comply with the laws, Pornhub is pulling service in many of these states. Pornhub says the rules violate freedom of speech, while The American Civil Liberties Union told Politico that the laws will “burden adults’ access to speech that is protected and they have every right to engage with and to access.”
By targeting online disinformation such as Russian propaganda in Europe, the DSA could inadvertently create “excessive and unintended restrictions” in other areas, two free speech researchers wrote for Tech Policy Press, a tech policy site. Investigative outlets like Bellingcat rely on access to such content for their reporting, they argued, and a ban would hinder their efforts to inform the public about covert Kremlin campaigns, for example.