Europeans increasingly using methods that bypass user-tracking could reshape enforcement of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA). Newly published transparency reports indicate that several major pornographic websites have reported sharp declines in their estimated monthly EU user numbers.
Under the DSA, platforms designated as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) must comply with additional requirements, including measures to mitigate risks such as those related to child protection, regular transparency reporting, and annual independent audits. The key threshold for receiving the VLOP designation is 45 million average monthly users in the European Union.
According to the latest reports, three of the four largest adult websites reported user numbers below that threshold, despite some of them previously being over the limit. The DSA, ironically, made online browsing more unsafe, since now, the use of incognito modes and VPNs by Europeans skew user statistics, allowing some adult websites to drop out of the VLOP designation.
One platform reported 46 million average monthly EU users, down from 77 million in August 2025. The company attributed the decline largely to the growing number of people using an ‘incognito’ window.
Another platform owned by the same company reported 31 million average monthly EU users, a sharp decline from 84 million in August. It provided the same explanation, saying the lower figures resulted from changes in how it estimates the geographical origin of users browsing in incognito mode.
If the European Commission accepts the reported figures at face value, only one of the four platforms would continue to qualify as a Very Large Online Platform, meaning the others could become subject only to the DSA’s general obligations rather than its enhanced regulatory regime. This would bring a much lower level of oversight.
The reported declines suggest that the growing use of privacy-focused browsing methods among Europeans may be complicating efforts to accurately measure platform reach under the DSA. Because users who browse in private mode are more difficult to identify and locate geographically, changes in measurement methodology can substantially affect whether a platform is found to exceed the regulatory threshold established by the law.
