Pornhub just lost two top execs.
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- MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo have resigned, Variety first reported.
- Mindgeek owns a collection of porn sites including Pornhub, Redtube, YouPorn.
- The resignations come a week after a report on underage and nonconsensual content on Pornhub.
Pornhub’s parent company MindGeek just lost two of its top executives.
MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo have both resigned, as first reported by Variety and confirmed to various outlets by the company.
MindGeek owns various porn sites including Pornhub, Redtube, and YouPorn.
“Antoon and Tassillo leave MindGeek’s day-to-day operations after more than a decade in leadership positions with the company,” a MindGeek spokesperson told Variety.
The spokesperson said the company is looking for replacements, and in the meantime the executive team will run operations.
Numerous outlets including Variety noted the resignations came the week after The New Yorker published a report on nonconsensual and underage material ending up on Pornhub.
MindGeek denied the timing of Antoon and Tassillo’s departures was linked to the article in a statement to The Washington Post, and a MindGeek spokesperson told Variety their resignations have been in the works since early this year.
“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,” a MindGeek spokesperson told The Post.
“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,” the spokesperson added.
MindGeek did not immediately respond when contacted by Insider for comment on Antoon and Tassillo’s departure.
MindGeek has seen bad press before. The New York Times published a column in December 2020 about underage content on Pornhub.
In June 2021 a group of 34 women filed a civil case against MindGeek accusing it of profiting from videos of them that were posted to Pornhub without their consent. Out of the 34 plaintiffs 14 said they’d been the victims of underage sex trafficking.
Antoon’s name appeared in the press in April 2021 after a $16 million Montreal mansion he owned caught fire. Investigators said the fire was the result of arson, but no one has been arrested or charged in conjunction with the fire.
