New revelations concerning child pornography content on PornHub have got the better of the two bosses of Mindgeek, the parent company of the leading platform in the X industry.
If you’re familiar with PornHub, the name Mindgeek probably sounds a bit more obscure to you. Yet it is one of the largest groups in the porn industry. In addition to the famous platform, it owns other more or less known names like YouPorn, RedTube, as well as production studios such as Brazzers. Created in 2004 by the German Fabian Thylmann, the company would brew hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to its X empire.
But Mindgeek has only been called Mindgeek since 2013, when the founder sold his shares to Feras Antoon and David Tassilo for 100 million dollars. Since then, the latter two have held the reins of the company. But at the end of 2020, a column published in the New York Times made the latter violently waver, accusing it in particular of hosting videos featuring rape, child pornography, revenge porn, etc. A few days later, PornHub tightened its policy and deleted hundreds of accounts and nearly 10 million videos.
Management takes the door
A year and a half later, the firm finds itself again under fire from critics with a new long-term publication, in the New Yorker this time. The American weekly met minors who were victims of blackmail, whose naked photos ended up on PornHub. Snapshots that sometimes remained for months before they were deleted. These revelations undermine the discourse of the platform according to which everything is now done to guard against this kind of practice.
This time, it is the two big bosses, Feras Antoon and David Tassilo, who are missing out. According variety, the two employees have resigned from their respective positions, CEO and COO. However, they remain shareholders of Mindgeek. If the latter affirms that the departure of the two men was planned for a long time, the timing is puzzling.