France’s justice system has launched a formal probe into the unexpected resurgence of a controversial platform tied to one of the country’s most high-profile violent sexual crime cases, renewing urgent calls for stronger regulation of unmoderated anonymous online spaces. The original platform, Coco.gg, first gained infamy during the 2024 trial of Dominique Pelicot, a man convicted of drugging his wife Gisèle Pelicot for more than 10 years, raping her repeatedly, and recruiting more than 50 random strangers via the platform’s chatrooms to join in the attacks. Forty-nine additional men were also convicted of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault against Gisèle Pelicot in the December 2024 ruling, all of whom had connected with Pelicot on the platform.
Long before the Pelicot case brought national attention to the platform, French law enforcement had linked Coco.gg to a litany of other serious crimes, including widespread child sexual abuse, drug trafficking, and even murder. The site operated with no content moderation whatsoever and required no user registration, allowing anonymous users to access open chatrooms with zero vetting. By the time authorities took the original platform offline in 2024, it had been cited in more than 23,000 official criminal activity reports, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office. The platform’s founder, Isaac Steidl, was arrested and charged with multiple offenses including possession and distribution of child pornography in January 2025, and he has formally denied all charges against him.
But in early April 2025, internet users spotted at least two new platforms with nearly identical design layouts and similar names to the original Coco site operating publicly online. One of the new platforms, Cocoland.cc, released a public statement denying any connection to the original Coco.gg and its founder. As of April 29, Cocoland.cc had been taken offline, but a second Cocoland-branded site remained accessible to users that morning.
Investigators have now opened an official investigation into the new sites on charges of “disseminating violent, pornographic, or offensive messages accessible to minors”, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to the BBC. Steidl’s legal representative, attorney Julien Zanatta, told Agence France-Presse that his client has “nothing to do” with the newly emerged platforms.
Local French news outlet BFM TV conducted an on-the-record test of the accessible new platform, finding that journalists could create a pseudonymous profile and access chatrooms in seconds, with no registration requirements or identity verification checks. When a reporter posed as a 13-year-old girl, they were immediately contacted by multiple platform users who continued to send lewd photos and explicit sexual messages even after being told the account holder was underage.
Sarah El Haïry, France’s High Commissioner for Childhood, condemned the resurgence of the platform, calling it a “collective failure” in the fight against child sexual abuse, one of the most severe forms of violence against minors. “Websites like this exploit every legal and regulatory loophole, they actively seek out prey, and that prey is children,” El Haïry said in a public statement. She added that predators routinely target and approach children via these unmoderated platforms, holding both the site creators and hosting services accountable for enabling the harm. El Haïry also confirmed she has filed separate official complaints against two additional unregulated open chatroom platforms that pose similar risks to minors.