PARIS (Reuters) -France’s child protection agency chief Sarah El Hairy has asked the regulator to investigate second-hand clothes marketplace Vinted for allegedly failing to prevent minors accessing adult content, in another move against e-commerce giants in the country.
El Hairy asked TV and internet regulator Arcom to probe Vinted after finding some classified ads on the platform allegedly redirected all users, even underage ones, to websites with pornographic content, she said in an interview on French TV channel France 3 on Sunday.
“Where there are children or teenagers, there are predators, and what they did this time is to use sales of ordinary objects to direct (users) towards pornographic sites,” she said.
Vinted said in response that it has a zero-tolerance policy on unsolicited sexual communication, promotion of sexual services or nude images on its platform.
“We do not allow members to use listings to promote adult websites, and we take action against listings or profiles like this as soon as we become aware of them,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
France is cracking down broadly on large foreign e-commerce leaders in an attempt to protect local retailers.
Many of these feel threatened by what they see as unfair competition from cheaper and better-marketed products on their own turf by large platforms from China such as AliExpress, Temu or Shein, or from the U.S. such as eBay or Amazon.
A consumer watchdog opened investigations against five such platforms for violating rules on selling illicit products online a few days after Shein opened its first physical store in Paris.
The French crackdown echoes similar EU initiatives such as the Thursday decision to bring forward by one year customs duties on low-value parcels arriving in the bloc in an effort to slow down the flow of goods from China.
(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi; Editing by Inti Landauro and Jan Harvey)
