Top men of parent company Pornhub lay down positions

Feras Antoon and David Tassillo, the CEO and COO of MindGeek, have resigned. MindGeek is the parent company of a number of porn websites, including Pornhub and YouPorn. It is not clear why the top men are stepping down from their positions.

A company spokesperson tells Variety that MindGeek had been planning to replace the leadership since early this year† Antoon and Tassillo will remain shareholders of the company. MindGeek is currently still looking for candidates for the open positions.

The departure of Antoon and Tassillo is not long after an article in The New Yorker about MindGeek’s websites, mainly Pornhub† According to the article, Pornhub has been hosting sexually explicit videos that were recorded and distributed without permission for years. Child abuse images would also be posted on the platform.

It is MindGeek’s policy that the videos on the site are checked to ensure that they do not contain minors. Also, moderators would check that the videos were shared with the permission of the people in them. However, The New Yorker spoke to several women who discovered videos and photos of themselves on Pornhub. They spent months trying to persuade the site to remove the footage.

MindGeek’s spokesperson denies that The New Yorker’s article was the reason for Antoon and Tassillo’s departure.