PARIS—France’s digital regulator, Arcom, might consider forcing X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to verify the age of its users. This is due to X confirming in their acceptable use policies that adult entertainment content, nudity, and sexually explicit material are allowed to be hosted on the platform.
In a statement to the European Union’s edition of Politico, Digital Minister Clara Chappaz and her office told the political outlet that X will be treated like a porn platform under the French SREN age verification law that forced Pornhub.com and its sister sites to block the country’s digital space.
“X has indicated since 2024 that it accepts the distribution of pornographic content,” said the statement. “It must therefore be treated as such.”
Chappaz’s team, Politico reports, is tasked with “examining the designation of X in the decree concerning pornographic sites that must verify the age of their users.” Such a confirmation of the views of the ministry follows Chappaz’s sharing on French news television that she expects X to ban adult content or implement age verification.
Failure for platform compliance with the age verification law that was adopted in 2023 would lead to platforms being fined, delisted from search engines, or blocked. It is worth noting that Chappaz additionally told Euractiv in a recent interview that they will continue to ban pornography platforms that don’t comply with the SREN law.
And, they will continue to do this even with a surge in consumers searching for and adopting VPN software to circumvent any regional or national website block.
“There will always be a way to circumvent [blocked content], but it [the law] makes it much harder,” Chappaz told Euractiv. She also openly admitted that VPN software could render the law useless, but will continue to enforce it.
X is by far the friendliest mainstream social media platform toward adult content. As AVN reported last June, X formerly allowed porn content on the platform.
