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Two top Pornhub executives have resigned after the adult website company was accused of hosting sexually explicit nonconsensual videos, including ones involving minors, for years.
Pornhub-owner MindGeek said on Tuesday Chief Executive Officer Feras Antoon and Chief Operating Officer David Tassillo have resigned after more than a decade running the adult website company.
‘Antoon and Tassillo leave MindGeek’s day-to-day operations after more than a decade in leadership positions with the company,’ the company said in a statement. ‘MindGeek’s executive leadership team will run day-to-day operations on an interim basis, with a search underway for replacements.’
News of the executives’ exit comes after The New Yorker released a scathing report about the company, claiming that its system failed to address videos depicting underage and non-consenting individuals, including on its Pornhub, Brazzers, RedTube and YouPorn sites.
Chief Executive Officer Feras Antoon (left) and Chief Operating Officer David Tassillo (right) resigned from MindGeek, the company best known for operating Pornhub
It comes after The New Yorker released a scathing report that Pornhub has hosted sexually explicit nonconsensual videos, including ones involving minors, for years
A spokesperson for MindGeek said the executives’ stepping down was planned since early 2022, adding that both Antoon and Tassillo will remain shareholders of the company.
Fatoon, 46, a Syrian immigrant to Canada, co-founded Brazzers in 2005 before teaming up with Tassilo to purchase Pornhub-owner Manwin in 2012 from German businessman Fabian Thylmann.
The company was renamed MindGeek in 2013, with Antoon serving as CEO and Tassillo as COO as the duo controlled some of the most popular porn sites in the world.
Antooon, of Montreal, is married with two children, with his brother, Mark, serving as a vice-president at MindGeek.
Tassillo lives a lavish life in Montreal, Quebec. He lives in this house on a quiet cul-de-sac in Laval, just north of Montreal. The home backs onto the Prairies River.
In a statement, MindGeek slammed the New Yorker story, which chronicled the plight of a 15-year-old British girl struggling to have explicit videos of her removed from the company’s websites that were uploaded without her consent.
‘The New Yorker had the opportunity to seriously evaluate what works in fighting illegal material on the internet by looking at the facts, comparing the policies of platforms, and studying the results,’ MindGeek’s statement said.
‘Instead, they chose to ignore the fact that MindGeek has more comprehensive and effective policies than any other major platform on the internet, and decided to peddle the same gross mischaracterizations that anti-porn extremists have spewed for decades.’
Alana Evans, president of the Adult Performance Artists Guild, a union for adult pornagraphers, said that while the resignations appeared out of the blue, she doubted it would have much effect on the company.
‘MindGeek is corporate porn,’ she told the Washington Post. ‘Other owners and CEOs are far more involved in porn and the product.’
Pornhub has been criticized in the past for hosting such videos despite having a policy that is meant to protect against this.
Luxembourg-based MindGeek, which also owns adult film production companies, has been embroiled in controversy in recent years.
A 2021 lawsuit alleged MindGeek violated federal sex trafficking and child pornography laws by allowing, and profiting from, its users posting pornographic videos featuring people under the age of 18.
Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc in 2020 had suspended processing payments on Pornhub after a New York Times report found unlawful content on its website.
Antoon and his wife Nicole Manos own several properties in Quebec. She’s pictured with their two children in 2017
Antoon’s dream $16million Montreal manor (pictured before the blaze), which backed onto ‘Mafia Row’, was reduced to ashes in April last year after a suspected arson attack
Tassillo lives with his family in this opulent house in Laval, just north of Montreal, Quebec
Nicholas Kristof, opinion columnist at The New York Times, wrote Friday that Pornhub carries rape scenes, revenge pornography and other examples of explicit video taken without consent of the participants.
‘[The] site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags,’ Kristof wrote.
Pornhub responded in a statement that it is ‘irresponsible and flagrantly untrue’ to suggest that it allows images of the sexual abuse of children on its site.
Pornhub added that it employs moderators to screen every upload and that it removes illegal material.
The online payment service PayPal also stopped processing payments to Pornhub in 2019.
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