The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into Snapchat to assess its compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA). The Brussels authority announced this on Thursday.
The Commission alleges that Snapchat may have breached the DSA by inadequately protecting minors from grooming attempts and from recruitment for criminal activities. It also suspects that information about the sale of illegal goods-such as drugs-and age‑restricted items-like vapes and alcohol-has been disseminated on the platform.
The inquiry concentrates on five key areas, the most prominent being age verification. Under Snapchat’s terms of service users must be at least 13 years old to join the platform. The Commission, however, argues that the self‑declared age mechanism is insufficient and that children under 13 are not effectively precluded from accessing the service. Furthermore, the platform’s default account settings may not adequately safeguard the privacy and safety of minors.
A second focus is the spread of data about the sale of prohibited products. The Commission believes that Snapchat’s content‑moderation tools are not robust enough to stop such information from circulating and that the user‑reporting mechanisms lack sufficient usability.
The Commission will now conduct a detailed examination and gather additional evidence to substantiate its claims. Deputy Commissioner Henna Virkkunen said: “From grooming and confronting illegal content to account settings that endanger the safety of minors, Snapchat appears to have overlooked that the Digital Services Act mandates high safety standards for all users. In the course of this investigation, we will closely scrutinise the company’s compliance with our regulations”.