Top executives quit Pornhub’s parent company MindGeek

Both the CEO and COO of MindGeek, the internet company best known for running Pornhub, have handed in their resignations.

The departures of CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo, first reported by Variety, comes on the heels of an 8,000-word investigative report published in the New Yorker Monday, alleging the company has failed to address videos featuring underage and non-consenting individuals. Despite the timing, a spokesperson for the company said a change in leadership has been in the works for a while now.

“Antoon and Tassillo leave MindGeek’s day-to-day operations after more than a decade in leadership positions with the company,” according to a statement obtained by Variety.

“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.”

Both executives will remain shareholders in MindGeek.

In response to the New Yorker’s scathing article, the company in a statement claimed it has implemented some of the most extensive safeguards “in the history of the internet.” It went on to cite a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children report, which concluded Pornhub had few instances of child sexual abuse and that it removed such content “in the shortest amount of time after being notified among all major platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more.”

“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 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.”

The statement stands contrary to claims raised in the New Yorker’s piece by several women, all of whom said they found videos and pictures of themselves on Pornhub that they did not consent to sharing. They further alleged they spent months trying to get the site to take down the material.

MindGeek, which has about 1,600 employees, said it does not post anything without vetting via human and automated moderation systems.