I've gotta say, France has a point here.
If you didn't know, as part of the mission to be a "free speech" platform, X hosts lots and lots of porn on the site with very little restriction.
And France is considering action to keep young people from downloading Musk's app because it is an easy portal to pornography.
Such a designation could effectively ban children from accessing the social media app unless it curtailed adult content. Paris has recently upped its efforts to protect kids online by requiring age verification by porn platforms.
'X has indicated since 2024 that it accepts the distribution of pornographic content. It must therefore be treated as such,' Digital Minister Clara Chappaz's office told POLITICO.
So uhh, wouldn't X be better if they just banned porn? Or, really, if everyone everywhere banned porn and it was illegal. But if it's going to be on X then kids ought to be protected.
This appears to be a similar law to those passed in various states requiring the website PornHub to verify the age of users, resulting in Pornhub banning people in those states from accessing the site at all.
France recently passed a nationwide age-verification law for porn sites, going into effect this week, and they are now trying to determine if X falls into the category of a porn site.
This will force X to make a choice on either putting in place restrictions on porn on the platform or potentially losing a large market in France.
The confirmation follows an appearance by Chappaz on French TV show 'Quotidien' on Thursday evening, where she said X will soon receive 'the same pretty papers as YouPorn' instructing X to ban adult content or implement age screening ...
Failure to comply could see sites fined, delisted from search engines or blocked completely.
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