Pornhub has been back in the news again this summer, and this time because CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo suddenly quit their jobs. Their resignations come on the heels of an investigation by the New Yorker that culminated in a searing indictment of the ways in which Pornhub and their parent company, MindGeek, enabled and monetized videos of rape, revenge porn, child abuse, and trafficked women.
Between 2019 and 2022, journalists from The Globe and Mail, Tortoise Media, the New Yorker, and The New York Times launched independent investigations into MindGeek and its elusive founders. The women, some of whom were children at the time, have shared their stories, given interviews, and testified in front of the Canadian Parliament. For these victims, the road to justice meant a years-long fight to hold certain powerful men accountable – men who made it their business to create convoluted networks that obscured their identities.
In the following sections, we'll look at how a group of businessmen built the internet's largest porn empire, the women who battled them, and what's at stake in the struggle for transparency and accountability.
The Popularity Of Pornhub: Public Relations, Lies, And Stunts
When Pornhub entered the public consciousness, it did so with a forward-thinking, sex-positive public relations campaign. They also cast themselves as social justice supporters with ideas beyond pornography. They made lavish claims, albeit undocumented, about branded plows being sent to rescue snow-bound Americans. There was also a crowdfunding effort to film a movie in space, which apparently never happened, and a Superbowl commercial that didn't make the on-air cut. Pornhub even spawned the birth of other companies, such as Eat24, a food delivery service that advertised only on adult websites. Even if the marketing ploys were pure stunts, they worked. Pornhub would eventually become one of the most popular sites on the internet, attracting roughly 130 million unique visitors per day and offering over 14 million videos all in one place.
To fully understand Pornhub as a business and as a cultural phenomenon, we have to take a step back and look at its parent company, MindGeek. MindGeek employs somewhere between 1600 and 1800 people, while raking in over $ 460 million a year in revenue – half of which comes from advertising. The company is registered in Luxembourg, a tax haven, but headquartered in Montreal. Forty-eight subsidiaries fall under MindGeek and are located in Cyprus, Ireland, the United States, Canada, and Romania. In addition to Pornhub, they also own Brazzers, YouPorn, RedTube, and Reality Kings. Other subsidiary companies produce video games, some of which are pornographic, and VPN products to help users surf their sites anonymously. Their most profitable subsidiary is TrafficJunky, an advertising network that boasts 4.6 billion ad impressions per day. Clients include major players like Heinz and Unilever.
The exceedingly ambitious owners needed financing in order to expand, which meant taking on a staggering amount of debt, often at high-interest rates. Keeping up with debt payments means generating enough web traffic to maintain their ad network and their porn sites. This is their bottom line.
Keep reading for more on the elusive figures who own and run Pornhub, and how these powerful men built their empire.
The Rise Of MindGeek: Power, Anonymity, and The Owners Of Pornhub
Here is a simplified history of how MindGeek rose to power. A young programmer and entrepreneur named Fabian Thylmann was the first to invent a tracking software, which was essentially an early version of cookies – this is how he first made his fortune. In the early 2000s, free porn was flooding the internet, and pay sites were struggling to keep their foothold. Thylmann swept in and bought out a large number of them, soon realizing that he would need a centralized hub to work with them. He partnered with a Montreal-based company named Mansef, which was a growing startup with a number of adult sites already under their auspices. Mansef was affiliated with a company that launched Pornhub in 2007. By 2010, Thylmann had managed to secure over $ 100 million in financing from two firms in Montreal. He used the financing to buy Mansef and renamed the company Manwin. He took on an additional $ 360 million in loans, and he was able to convince investors because of his approach, which was innovative for its time. By giving away free content, he cultivated paying customers by advertising the unique content they would receive by signing up. Free sites also kept up his ad revenue by generating the traffic he needed.
By 2012, Thylmann was arrested and deported to Germany, where he was charged with tax evasion. By this time, his shares in Manwin were worth $ 500 million. In 2013, Feras Antoon and David Tassillo bought out Thylmann and renamed the company MindGeek. Corey Price joined them as a vice president who oversaw Pornhub. Antoon had previously been an employee of Manwin, but questions abounded about Antoon and Tassillo's finances. As employees and journalists eventually discovered, the two men had a silent partner: an Austrian man by the name of Bernd Bergmair.
The four men are as elusive as one might expect – after all, anonymity in the porn industry is not new. Antoon and Tassillo had never been seen in public until they testified during a February 2021 ethics hearing in Canada. Antoon has a website in his name with articles, but the only photo on the site is a stock photo of a different man. But the richest and most secretive of them is Bergmair. Journalists from The Globe and Mail tracked him to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he studied. Only one photo of him exists from that time period. Journalists from Tortoise Media later tracked down his classmates, who vaguely remember him as intellectually brilliant and highly motivated. All clues pointed to China as his home, but he was eventually located in London, thanks to an Instagram account maintained by his wife or partner. When confronted by a journalist, he refused to speak or answer questions about the lawsuits pending against MindGeek for nonconsensual sexual content. One thing about him is certain – by 2008, he was the owner of RedTube, a popular adult website. When he became a partial owner of MindGeek, RedTube merged with Pornhub and their other adult sites. He is still the owner of RedTube and is a majority stakeholder in a number of subsidiaries owned by MindGeek.
Keep reading to find out what went wrong and what the company has done to try to reign in its violent and non-consensual content.
The Victims Speak Out: Violence, Profit-Sharing, And Ruined Lives
In 2021, a class-action lawsuit was filed against MindGeek and Pornhub. Plaintiff Jane Doe 1 describes being drugged and raped by an adult male, who filmed the act. He joined a profit-sharing program administered by MindGeek, which meant that Doe's rapist and MindGeek would split profits from downloads and views of the rape videos. MindGeek is accused of not taking sufficient steps to verify the age or identity of Jane Doe 1 while disseminating the footage. Doe 1's rape video eventually accrued over 2400 views. You can read the entire complaint here.
These are more victims' stories, followed by what else we know about the nonconsensual content on Pornhub. Some of the stories were told to Nicolas Kristof at The New York Times, some to Sheelah Kolhatkar at the New Yorker, and some to Laila Mickelwait, a prominent victims advocate.
Rachel was blackmailed at the age of 15 and ended up with explicit videos on Pornhub. The company took weeks to respond to her takedown requests, only to allow the videos to be uploaded again in smaller clips. Clips were sent to family members, and a stalker tracked her down at home. Rachel eventually attempted suicide.
Serena Fleitas was 13 years old when she discovered she was on Pornhub. She also tried to take her own life. Ms. Fleitas' lawyer has said that the company knowingly monetized such content, although they have denied such claims.
When a 15-year-old girl went missing for a year in Florida, her family turned up 58 videos of her on Pornhub. A 30-year-old man was arrested and charged with lewd and lascivious battery. The company said they removed the content as soon as it was reported.
When Tina escaped an abusive boyfriend, he uploaded nude photos and videos of her to Pornhub. Like Rachel, she experienced hellish wait times and videos that were reposted over and over again.
In 2018, a pregnant mother and member of the U.S. armed forces was secretly filmed having sex with her ex-husband, who then shared the video on Pornhub.
When a 14-year-old girl was raped and the video was uploaded to Pornhub, it was the girl's classmate who contacted the authorities – not Pornhub.
Nearly all the victims had their legal names and addresses published along with the illegal content, despite MindGeek's policy against divulging personal information.
The Times of London launched an investigation and found dozens of examples of illegal material. In 2019, Nicolas Kristof wrote about Pornhub's abuse problem, noting that there were videos of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.
Over 15 former employees of MindGeek and Pornhub have spoken to journalists anonymously, out of fear of retribution. Several have noted that Pornhub had the ability to remove a video after it was flagged, but would leave it up several days during a review. This still allowed ad space to be sold against it, and Pornhub still made a profit. Users who uploaded content were rarely punished, although Pornhub has recently taken steps to block such users.
Until Pornhub came under intense scrutiny, it was possible to type in search terms such as "child rape" and get a long list of hits. Violent search terms like these have been disabled in recent months.
In the next section, we'll look at one advocate's work with the victims and her campaign to hold Pornhub responsible. She spoke directly to the Inquisitr, clarifying issues that have made her controversial and explaining her singular aim.
The Advocate: Laila Mickelwait And The Justice Defend Fund
In addition to Kristof and the journalists that broke this story, Laila Mickelwait has played an important role in holding Pornhub accountable. Rachel reached out to her after the U.K authorities did little to help her. She and a host of other Pornhub victims have depended on Mickelwait, who is a controversial figure. Her prior work with Exodus Cry, a conservative Christian organization known for its anti-LGBTQ stance, has made her a hero of the far right and a target for the far left. Exodus Cry is not just anti-trafficking or anti-sex abuse, but also against commercial pornography in all its forms. But Mickelwait cut ties with them in 2020 and launched her own non-religious, non-partisan organization, the Justice Defense Fund. Her goal is close Pornhub entirely, which seems unlikely, although her petition toward that end has reached 2 million signatures.
But regardless of what one thinks of Mickelwait's time with Exodus Cry, she has been instrumental in empowering victims to come forward with their stories. If not for Mickelwait's insistence on attracting attention to this issue, the lawsuit might not have gained such traction.
Scroll down for more on what's at stake in the lawsuit, how it will affect other websites, and what Pornhub has done in response to the charges.
The Stakes Are High: Sex Workers, Child Safety, And The Future Of Content Moderation
Every day, users upload fifteen terabytes a day to Pornhub, which is roughly half the size of the Netflix catalog. Pornhub's original solution to content moderation was to hire a staff of "content formatters" who were responsible for up to 200 videos per day. This left little time for careful moderation. The job paid $ 30,000 a year and involved watching rape, animal abuse, and content that left moderators traumatized after. Content formatters interviewed by The Globe and Mail said there was no way to determine ages or whether the footage was even consensual if it had not been professionally produced.
The problem of content moderation plagues all the large social media platforms and most websites open to public content. MindGeek even uses the same law that Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg invoke to protect themselves from being charged with allowing the spread of disinformation. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields computer services from being treated as publishers of information, if that information is provided by a third party. The law intended to shield websites from a barrage of lawsuits, but it had the unintended effect of shielding pornography sites from taking responsibility for their content.
The lawsuit against MindGeek has far-reaching consequences if the protections of Section 230 are limited by the courts. Sites like Facebook and Twitter will be held accountable for what is posted and promoted. Limiting Section 230 could also be seen as an infringement of First Amendment rights. But in Alabama, a lawsuit against MindGeek filed by two women ended with the judge ruling that the company forfeited the protections of Section 230 when it provided incentives for child abuse.
Mickelwait's campaign to end Pornhub threatens the livelihood of sex workers who opt to use the site to sell content, although sites like OnlyFans have provided a viable alternative in recent years. People who defend Pornhub fall back on the issue of the consensual content and the sex workers who need the site to make a living. If Pornhub continues to grow, then the issue of how to control its content while keeping women and children safe becomes the most pressing question.
Keep reading to the final section to learn more about how Pornhub responded and what lies ahead.
The Aftermath: Pornhub's Response And The Road Ahead
In December of 2019, Visa and Mastercard cut ties with Pornhub and stopped processing all payments. This came on the heels of the Kristof article, and it was one move that was criticized by advocates for sex workers. It penalized MindGeek but also everyone on their site. It was a decisive move, nonetheless, and signaled a turning of the tide against Pornhub.
In addition to the class-action suit, Antoon and Tassillo were compelled in 2021 to testify at a hearing held by Canada's Federal Ethics Committee. When Antoon was asked if MindGeek “had ever monetized child sexual abuse and nonconsensual material," he would not give a direct answer.
By September of 2021, Corey Urman resigned as the head of Pornhub. Pornhub announced a huge overhaul to its moderation system, hiring a third party to verify ages and identities. When a user flags a video, it is now disabled until it is reviewed. All of their content is now reviewed by humans and automated means. Mickelwait and others have still found illegal content, and she pointed out that Visa and Mastercard still process payments for TrafficJunky, which means their most lucrative network remains somewhat intact. However, a Canadian tech company reviewed documents and noted that Pornhub's web traffic had declined by 40% since 2019, and the company had begun to lay off staff.
It was also reported that Antoon was attempting to sell the company, to no avail. His resignation, along with Tassillo's, came as no shock when it was announced in June of 2022. He and Tassillo remain owners and majority shareholders. Regardless of how well Pornhub moderates its content in the future, the damage has been done and a small group of men still hold all the money.
If you want to get involved, here is a list of resources.
]]>The Inquisitr
