"Hide this link that I should not see." On Sunday, November 16, the French high commissioner for children, Sarah El Haïry, announced that she had referred the matter to the French Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (ARCOM) to condemn Vinted, the second-hand clothing platform, for hosting profiles promoting accounts on the pornographic platforms Mym and OnlyFans. Indeed, classified ads for swimsuits or lingerie are sometimes used as a storefront by internet users who sell explicit content on specialized platforms, as reported by the French economic investigation website L'Informé. On November 17, El Haïry announced that she would do the same for Leboncoin and for Etsy, the marketplace specializing in handicrafts.
Should regulators really get involved? Admittedly, Vinted does not verify the age of its users, but the platform largely relies on the use of a credit card, and thus is mainly used by adults. A child wandering into the far reaches of the site might indeed come across photos of young women in underwear – no less legal than the images found in clothing catalogs or on lingerie retailer websites. And if they clicked a link leading to Mym or OnlyFans, they would immediately encounter a digital age-verification wall.
