Ms Claire Dil?:

I do not think that the Senator had any specific question for X, but I would like to make a general comment on the question of how we deal with GDPR consent and age verification. Of course, we apply GDPR consent according to place. In France, it is set at 15 years old and we respect that in that country.

We ask for parental consent before people can use our services. We are also part of the special committee on screen time. We testified before that committee on what it is the appropriate screen time for people.

On the issue of age verification, we are not opposed to it on our platform as such. The issue is more that we do not really have a technical solution in place. In countries like the UK, France and the US, this conversation is a bit more advanced. In France, for example, it was a matter for the CNIL, the data protection authority and ARCOM, the audiovisual regulator, to come up with guidance on the systems for social media platforms to use. There was a lot of discussion around the system of double anonymity. At the time, we thought that a system of double anonymity might work but we are still awaiting a recommendation on that. It has still not been published. The discussion at EU level is on an age-appropriate design code and we are all part of that. We need to continue to have this broader discussion with all interested parties including the social media platforms, the app stores, search engines and the wider community to see what solution will be able to bridge concerns around better privacy and better protection. The issue is about making sure we know who are users are and what age they are. When we reach that point, and reach a conclusion on this, we will be able to use a system that has been vetted by the data protection regulator as well.