Porn Giant MindGeek’s CEO, COO Exit; Fires 200 Employees
MindGeek, the parent company of adult site Pornhub, confirmed the resignation of its CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo. The exit of the top two executives happened amid the blowback on the company’s policies in restricting nonconsensual video uploads on its websites.
“Antoon and Tassillo leave MindGeek’s day-to-day operations after more than a decade in leadership positions with the company,” the firm said in a statement to Variety.
The company also said the remaining “executive leadership team will run day-to-day operations on an interim basis, with a search underway for replacements.” Both Antoon and Tassillo, two of the firm’s co-founders, will still be maintaining their stakes at the firm.
On the same day, the rumors of mass layoff seemed to have materialized. The company has reportedly fired 200 of its employees. As of the last available count, the firm employs roughly 1,600 people across its different platforms and subsidiaries.
Antoon and Tassillo’s resignations have spurred many speculations about the reason, including the increasing dissatisfaction of MindGeek co-owner Austrian investor Bernd Bergmair. The latter is said to have been sourcing funds to buy the two co-founders out of the company, according to people familiar with the matter, as the management team has been leading the firm into trouble.
“It’s a very precarious situation right now,” the person said to the Financial Times.
One of the issues hounding the firm is the sexually explicit nonconsensual videos being uploaded on Pornhub, sometimes involving underage subjects–an issue recently raised by an 8,000-word investigative piece in The New Yorker.
The article opens with Rachel (not her real name) who wrote to Pornhub in 2018 about her videos being uploaded on the site without her consent: “Hi, I’m underage and had many videos and photos posted of me on here. They keep getting reuploaded onto this site and I am only 15 in them and I don’t have the links. I don’t know what to do because every time I get them removed you keep allowing them to be uploaded its [sic] ruining my life.”
Related to these, MindGeek is currently facing a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of Christine Wing, who alleges that intimate videos of her were uploaded to PornHub without her consent.
The Canadian company based in Luxembourg operates popular adult entertainment websites Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn, as well as numerous pornography-focused film productions like Brazzers and Digital Playground.
Information for this briefing was found via Financial Times, Variety, The Globe and Mail, New Yorker, and the companies mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
