MindGeek, the parent company, known for operating Pornhub has announced that its Chief Executive Officer Feras Antoon, and Chief Operating Officer David Tassillo, have resigned, as per Variety.
In a statement to the publication, a company representative said, “Antoon and Tassillo leave MindGeek’s day-to-day operations after more than a decade in leadership positions with the company. With the company strategically positioned for long-term growth, MindGeek’s executive leadership team will run day-to-day operations on an interim basis, with a search underway for replacements.”
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While the two will continue to be shareholders in the company, the representative added that the leadership transition had been ongoing since early 2022.
The top execs’ exit comes after the New Yorker published an investigative article bout the company, alleging that Pornhub hosted several explicit videos which were taken nonconsensually, and also accuses the company of having child pornography on the platform.
As per MindGeek’s policies, the videos are vetted to see they don’t feature minors, and there are checks in place to ensure they haven’t been uploaded without consent. However, the New Yorker article included interviews with many women who found themselves on the porn site and have been trying to take the content down for months.
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The parent company also claims to have both human and automated moderation in place. Moreover, the company says that when users flag a video, it automatically gets hidden before a review is conducted. In 2020, the parent company ensured that users uploading content had to provide a government-issued identity, to do so.
As per the company, it provides numerous models “with the opportunity to earn a living”. Pornhub along with YouPorn and other MindGeek-owned platforms, reach 150 million users on a daily basis, the company said. Pornhub’s parent company is also looking to “massively expand” the talents it works with, Variety reported.