The European Union\u2019s General Court has upheld the European Commission\u2019s decision to classify adult entertainment platform Stripchat as a very large online platform, rejecting a legal challenge over how its European audience was calculated. The judgment, delivered on 14 October 2026, came from the Luxembourg-based court and concerns the application of the EU\u2019s Digital Services Act (DSA).<\/p>\n
The case was brought by Technius Ltd, which operates Stripchat. The company challenged the Commission\u2019s decision to designate the service as a very large online platform on 20 December 2023, arguing that the audience figures used by Brussels were unreliable and that the absence of a prescribed calculation method undermined legal certainty.<\/p>\n
Under the DSA, platforms with more than 45 million monthly active recipients in the EU fall into the very large online platform category and face additional regulatory obligations. These include measures relating to systemic risks, transparency, content moderation and independent auditing. The Commission is responsible for overseeing compliance with the enhanced requirements.<\/p>\n
The dispute centred on figures reported by Technius in February 2023. The company put Stripchat\u2019s average monthly active recipients in the EU at approximately 31.8 million, relying on data from commercial analytics provider Similarweb. It argued that certain visits should be excluded because users left the website without engaging with its content.<\/p>\n
The Commission disagreed with that approach. It concluded that the deductions had underestimated the platform\u2019s audience because the underlying Similarweb figures already incorporated filtering that removed many visits of this kind. Brussels consequently calculated that Stripchat had more than 62 million monthly unique visitors in the EU and designated it as a very large online platform.<\/p>\n
The General Court rejected Technius\u2019s challenge, finding that the Commission had adequately explained its calculation and was entitled to rely on the evidence available when it made the designation. The judges also rejected the argument that a subsequent change to Similarweb\u2019s methodology invalidated the original decision.<\/p>\n
That later revision produced an estimated monthly audience of approximately 37.3 million for the relevant period, below the 45 million threshold. However, the court held that the Commission\u2019s decision had to be assessed using the facts, applicable law and permissible evidence available when the designation was adopted. The ruling therefore does not establish that Stripchat currently exceeds the threshold.<\/p>\n
For Luxembourg, the immediate connection is judicial: the country hosts the EU court that delivered the judgment. The decision clarifies how a challenge to a platform\u2019s audience calculations was assessed under the DSA, while leaving the distinction between the original designation and later audience estimates explicit. The case concerns the Commission\u2019s 2023 decision, rather than a finding that the platform\u2019s present-day audience exceeds 45 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A landmark ruling tests how online platforms count their European audiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}