TOPLINE
The CEO and COO of MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub, resigned Tuesday, according to a report from Variety, in the wake of a bombshell New Yorker story that found “graphic” reports of pornographic videos of women and girls posted without their consent remained on the site “for years.
MindGeek – the Luxembourg-based company behind the pornographic sites Pornhub, RedTube, YouPorn, and Brazzers – announced Tuesday that it will launch a search to replace company CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassilo, according to Variety.
MindGeek’s pornography sites received over 4.5 billion visits during each month of 2020, approximately double the monthly site visits on Google and Facebook combined, a company spokesperson told The New Yorker.
Pornhub came under fire last December when Mastercard and Visa cut ties with the company, and lawmakers introduced a bill in Congress that would allow victims of “sexual assault, trafficking, and revenge porn” to sue porn sites that post videos of them without consent.
MindGeek confirmed the resignation in a statement to Forbes, saying Antoon and Tassillo will step away from day-to-day operations while remaining shareholders in the company.
In December 2021, Visa and Mastercard cut ties with Pornhub, refusing to process payments for Pornhub, following a New York Times column that reported the website featured “child rapes, revenge pornography, spycam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.” Pornhub denied the allegations, telling the Times that it was “unequivocally committed to combating child sexual abuse material” and has instituted a “comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy” to “identify and eradicate illegal material.” The company then released a statement, pledging to implement a set of new standards, including provisions that require verification before any videos are uploaded and prevent users from downloading videos from the site while hiring “outside experts” to make recommendations on “eliminating all illegal content.”
KEY QUOTE
In the New Yorker piece published last week, a woman identified as Rachel says explicit videos taken of her when she was just 15 appear on the site. She wrote to Pornhub, saying, “I don’t know what to do because every time I get them removed you keep allowing them to be uploaded it’s ruining my life.”
