No, Social Media Is Not Porn

As multiple countries enact or consider banning social media for children under a certain age, France is considering its own extreme measure to keep kids off social media: designating certain popular social media platforms as porn platforms. This designation would force these social media sites to adhere to France’s new, strict age verification requirements for porn platforms, which have already resulted in some of these platforms abandoning the French market. This move does not reflect the reality of how most minors—or adults, for that matter—use social media and is nothing more than a sneaky workaround to try to replicate the effects of a social media ban for children, along with all of the pitfalls those bans entail.

French Digital Minister Clara Chappaz’s office shared that it is considering designating social media platforms that allow adult content—such as Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, and X—as porn platforms, expressing that “[their] focus is age verification for any platform that distributes or enables the sharing of pornographic content.” This proposal is a clear attempt to circumvent aspects of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) that give the European Commission power to regulate “very large online platforms” (VLOPs). In doing so, France would fracture the EU’s “Digital Single Market,” the very reason behind the DSA and other similar legislation.

Moreover, the lack of nuance in France’s proposed approach fails to distinguish between platforms that primarily contain adult content and social media platforms that allow adult content with certain restrictions, such as labeling the content as graphically sexual or violent, or restricting it to certain spaces (such as Reddit’s “subreddits,” communities that only contain content fitting a certain theme) and preventing minors from accessing that content or those spaces.

The vast majority of content on social media platforms, including those that allow adult content, is not adult content. Social media platforms host a wide variety of content: art, news, entertainment, educational content, communities of users with similar interests, social and political debates, communication between friends, and much more. Much of this content may even be beneficial to children, who can use social media to become more socially and politically aware, obtain education on topics not taught in schools, stay connected to their friends, and find like-minded individuals who share their interests or experiences.

In addition, designating social media platforms as porn platforms introduces a host of issues regarding age verification. There are multiple methods of age verification, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. More accurate methods of age verification, such as requiring users to present a form of government-issued identification, are also more invasive. Methods using artificial intelligence (AI) to estimate a user’s age are increasingly accurate but may prove difficult to carry out within the constraints of the EU’s AI Act.

There are serious privacy and free speech implications behind requiring users to turn over their personal information in order to use a tool that is increasingly vital to social and political activism and everyday communication and expression. For example, many users would likely not want to give up their personal information to access social media, particularly platforms like Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, X, and others that enable users to maintain anonymity.

Designating social media platforms as porn platforms is inaccurate and introduces problems for platforms and users. There are better ways to protect children online, such as requiring interoperable parental controls and implementing opt-in child flag systems to signal that a user is underage, that preserve the benefits of social media while reducing the risks. Platforms that contain some adult content would be required to check for this flag and restrict flagged users from accessing adult content. France should utilize these targeted solutions instead of following in the misguided footsteps of countries banning social media for children.