PARIS — The Culture Committee of France’s National Assembly voted last week to expand age verification requirements already mandated for adult content to include several popular mainstream social media platforms.
The French lawmakers voted in favor of requiring social media platforms — including Instagram, TikTok and Snap — to block access to minors under 15, unless they have authorization from their parents.
The reasons cited by the committee for holding last week's hearing were to examine a proposed law establishing a “digital age of majority” and to “fight online hate.”
The bill was put forward by MP Laurent Marcangeli of the Macron-allied Horizons party, and was endorsed by the committee on Feb. 15, Politico reported.
Infringing social media companies, the Politico report noted, will “face fines of up to one percent of their annual global turnover. Technical solutions to verify users’ ages would need to be rubber-stamped by the audiovisual and privacy regulators — Arcom and CNIL — and Arcom would be empowered to sue non-compliant companies.”
The bill now heads to a plenary session and to the Senate.
A System of 'Double Anonymity'
According to Politico, French Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot has repeatedly stated that age verification for porn websites should be expanded to social media platforms, but the controversial anti-porn legislation “proved difficult to enforce because of privacy, technical and legal hurdles.”
On Feb. 14, Barrot told Parliament that a system of “double anonymity” would be tested at the end of March with a few adult companies, which he did not name, Politico explained.
“Users prove their age on a yet-undetermined trusted third party — such as a telecom operator or a digital identity service provider — that would generate a token of sorts, without the provider knowing the token’s purpose,” the report continued. “That token could then be used anonymously on porn websites.”
Barrot called his system "the best way to solve the age-verification stalemate for adult websites” but stressed that it was very much his intention to expand it to other types of platforms.
According to a French government source, CNIL and Arcom will be releasing technical guidelines that will “frame the minimum criteria” for adult sites to comply.
As XBIZ has been reporting, France’s age verification mandate was surreptitiously added to a hastily approved domestic violence law during an atypical and sparsely attended COVID-era session of Parliament in July 2020.
The law specifies that adult companies should be required to institute measures beyond simply asking an internet user whether they are of age. It also empowers a government official — the president of Arcom — to demand that the president of the judicial court order ISP providers to immediately block infringing sites in the entire country.
According to French tech journalist Marc Rees, who has been reporting on the developments for news site Next INpact, the controversial law’s constitutionality can be challenged based on the legislators’ vagueness in drafting it, which violates the legal principle of “freedom of expression and communication.”
A MindGeek spokesperson told Politico, “It is vital that any age verification measures implemented preserve user privacy and are easy to use. All regulation must be enforced equitably and effectively across all platforms offering adult material.”
For more of XBIZ’s ongoing coverage of age verification in France, click here.