EU Child-Protection Blitz: Snapchat Investigated, Pornhub & Peers Charged Under DSA

Brussels’ move echoes the U.S. 1998 COPPA rollout, when regulators first fined GeoCities in 2002 for collecting kids’ data without consent—a small case that nonetheless set enduring compliance norms. Over the past decade the EU has repeatedly exported rule-making power—GDPR in 2018, antitrust actions against Google (2017 €2.4 bn fine), and the December 2025 €120 m penalty on Musk’s X—signalling a structural shift: lawmakers no longer treat the internet as a self-policing frontier. This week’s twin actions deepen a century-long trend of shielding minors from commercial exploitation, from 19th-century factory reforms to 20th-century television watershed hours, now applied to algorithmic environments. If the DSA survives legal and diplomatic push-back, it could, like post-1906 U.S. food-safety laws, become a baseline copied worldwide, hard-wiring child-safety-by-design into every future social or adult-content platform. Conversely, failure would entrench a fragmented web of voluntary codes—perpetuating the very harms regulators aim to solve.