Dutch doctors file complaint against Snapchat over sale of illegal vapes
Copyright Matt Slocum/Copyright 2023 The AP. All rights reserved
By Cynthia Kroet
Published on 27/08/2025
The Netherlands has banned the sale of flavoured vapes, and sales to minors is also prohibited.
Dutch doctors have filed a regulatory complaint against media company Snap, which owns messaging application Snapchat, for failure to take measures to ban the sale of illegal electronic cigarettes, or vapes, which they claim is in breach of the EU’s online platform rules.
A spokesperson for ACM - Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), which is in charge of overseeing online platforms’ compliance with the Digital Services (DSA) in the Netherlands - confirmed that the regulator received the complaint.
"At this stage, we cannot comment on any further steps we may take; we will first review the enforcement request," the spokesperson said.
If the ACM takes up the case, it will have to refer the case to the European Commission.
Since Snap is considered one of the 25 Very Large Online Platforms (VLOP) under the DSA – those with more than 45 million monthly average users in Europe – the Commission is in charge of enforcement.
Snap, which was founded in 2011, has its EU headquarters in Amsterdam.
The doctors, united through the group Stichting Rookpreventie Jeugd (SRPJ), claim that young users of Snapchat can still buy illegal nicotine products, despite promises from the platform to stop the sale of vapes.
They say they have been in touch with Snap regarding the issue, asking for improvements to the company’s policy, but that their investigation found that youngsters could easily continue to buy the products.
A spokesperson for Snap told Euronews that "We share their commitment to helping keep young people safe, and we have invested immense resources to stop bad actors from abusing our platform and to educate Snapchatters."
"Unfortunately, there is no single safety feature or policy that can eliminate every threat online or in the world around us. This is why we continuously adapt our strategies as bad actors change their tactics, and actively work with trusted third parties to improve our systems," the spokesperson added.
Under the DSA, which became applicable to the biggest platforms in 2023, all online platforms are obliged to detect, flag and remove illegal content.
The Netherlands introduced a ban on the sale of flavoured vapes – often marked as a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes - in January 2024, and sales to minors is also prohibited. According to figures of the Dutch Health Ministry, 25% of 12 to 16-year-olds in the country have used electronic cigarettes.
In November 2023, the Commission sent formal requests for information under the DSA to Snap on the protection of minors, as well as on the design of their recommender systems. A Commission spokesperson could previously only confirm that Snapchat has replied to the questions.
Copyright Matt Slocum/Copyright 2023 The AP. All rights reserved
By Cynthia Kroet
Published on 27/08/2025
The Netherlands has banned the sale of flavoured vapes, and sales to minors is also prohibited.
Dutch doctors have filed a regulatory complaint against media company Snap, which owns messaging application Snapchat, for failure to take measures to ban the sale of illegal electronic cigarettes, or vapes, which they claim is in breach of the EU’s online platform rules.
A spokesperson for ACM - Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), which is in charge of overseeing online platforms’ compliance with the Digital Services (DSA) in the Netherlands - confirmed that the regulator received the complaint.
"At this stage, we cannot comment on any further steps we may take; we will first review the enforcement request," the spokesperson said.
If the ACM takes up the case, it will have to refer the case to the European Commission.
Since Snap is considered one of the 25 Very Large Online Platforms (VLOP) under the DSA – those with more than 45 million monthly average users in Europe – the Commission is in charge of enforcement.
Snap, which was founded in 2011, has its EU headquarters in Amsterdam.
The doctors, united through the group Stichting Rookpreventie Jeugd (SRPJ), claim that young users of Snapchat can still buy illegal nicotine products, despite promises from the platform to stop the sale of vapes.
They say they have been in touch with Snap regarding the issue, asking for improvements to the company’s policy, but that their investigation found that youngsters could easily continue to buy the products.
A spokesperson for Snap told Euronews that "We share their commitment to helping keep young people safe, and we have invested immense resources to stop bad actors from abusing our platform and to educate Snapchatters."
"Unfortunately, there is no single safety feature or policy that can eliminate every threat online or in the world around us. This is why we continuously adapt our strategies as bad actors change their tactics, and actively work with trusted third parties to improve our systems," the spokesperson added.
Under the DSA, which became applicable to the biggest platforms in 2023, all online platforms are obliged to detect, flag and remove illegal content.
The Netherlands introduced a ban on the sale of flavoured vapes – often marked as a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes - in January 2024, and sales to minors is also prohibited. According to figures of the Dutch Health Ministry, 25% of 12 to 16-year-olds in the country have used electronic cigarettes.
In November 2023, the Commission sent formal requests for information under the DSA to Snap on the protection of minors, as well as on the design of their recommender systems. A Commission spokesperson could previously only confirm that Snapchat has replied to the questions.
Copyright Thomas Padilla/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved.
By Kieran Guilbert
Published on 27/08/2025
Paris is suing the Australian platform for alleged negligence following the death of streamer Raphaël Graven, also known as Jean Pormanove, while on air.
The French government will sue the Australian video platform Kick for alleged negligence after the death of a user who livestreamed videos of himself being subjected to violence.
Raphaël Graven, 46, also known as Jean Pormanove, died earlier this month in Nice during a broadcast on Kick that had been running for more than 12 days.
Graven was known for streaming extreme challenges, and footage shared on social media showed him being slapped, punched and strangled — among other forms of abuse — by several men during the broadcast. The videos could not be independently verified by Euronews.
French media reported that the broadcast was interrupted soon after Graven's co-streamers found him unconscious on a bed. A postmortem carried out last Thursday found that Graven's death was not the result of trauma or the actions of a third party.
Clara Chappaz, France's digital affairs and artificial intelligence (AI) minister, said on Tuesday that Kick had failed to block "dangerous content" and accused the platform of breaking a 2004 law regulating online content.
"I have been fighting to bring order to the digital Wild West. Kick is my battle, and I am taking the platform to court," she said.
Separately on Tuesday, Paris prosecutors announced that they had launched an investigation into Kick. The probe will examine whether the platform knowingly broadcast "videos of deliberate attacks on personal integrity", the prosecutors said.
It will also look into whether Kick complied with the European Union's Digital Services Act, which requires platforms to report any risk of danger to life or personal safety.
In a statement released last week, Kick said it was deeply saddened by Graven's death and offered its condolences to his family, friends and community.
"We are committed to cooperating fully with the authorities in this process. We are undertaking a comprehensive review of our French-language content," it said. The platform has not publicly commented about Tuesday's developments in Paris.
Kick is a video streaming platform similar to Amazon's Twitch, but with a much more permissive moderation policy that allows gambling activities, sexually suggestive content or content involving humiliation or violence to be broadcast without automatic sanctions.
Anthropic settles AI copyright lawsuit with book authors
Copyright AP Photo/Richard Drew, File
By Euronews & AP
Published on 27/08/2025
A settlement is coming next week in a class action copyright lawsuit of book authors against artificial intelligence company Anthropic.
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic and a group of book authors settled a copyright infringement lawsuit.
Justin Nelson, the lawyer representing the book authors, said it is a "historic settlement [that] will benefit all class members".
The terms of the proposed class settlement will be finalised next week, according to a federal appeals court ruling filed on Tuesday. Anthropic declined to comment on the deal.
US District Judge William Alsup ruled in June that Anthropic didn’t break the law by training its chatbot Claude on millions of copyrighted books.
Related Meta and Anthropic win key verdicts in US AI copyright cases
However, the company was scheduled to go to trial over how it acquired those books by downloading them from online “shadow libraries” of pirated copies.
Alsup said in the June ruling that the AI system’s distilling of thousands of written works to be able to produce its own passages of text qualified as “fair use” under US copyright law because it was “quintessentially transformative”.
“Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s (AI large language models) trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different,” Alsup wrote.
Anthropic is facing other copyright-related legal challenges, including from Universal Music Group. It alleges that Anthropic illegally trained its AI programs on copyrighted lyrics.
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