The top executives running the world’s largest pornography website have resigned following a new bombshell report alleging the smut site left graphic videos of women and girls posted without their consent online “for years.”
Pornhub parent company MindGeek announced this week CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo have exited the company just days after The New Yorker published an 8,000-word essay reporting Pornhub continued hosting sexually explicit and nonconsensual videos — including clips involving children — years after being made aware of the illicit content.
Listen to CBN News’ brand new morning podcast, Quick Start 👇
While MindGeek policy claims videos on its pornography sites are vetted to ensure they don’t include minors and to verify the consent of all parties involved, several women told The New Yorker they discovered videos and photos of themselves on Pornhub that they did not consent to sharing online.
This has become a systemic issue for Pornhub.
Laila Mickelwait, an anti-sex-trafficking activist leading a campaign to shut down Pornhub, previously told CBN’s Faithwire the prolific pornography platform is profiting off “crime scenes.”
After Nicholas Kristof condemned Pornhub in a New York Times column for hosting illegal content, highlighting first-person accounts from victims like Serena Fleites, who testified before Canadian lawmakers in early 2021, the pornography site scrubbed millions of videos from its database — a move that came only after months of pressure and decisions by credit card companies to cut ties with the site.
Before Fleites’ story drew international attention, Pornhub made headlines after investigators found some 60 explicit videos of a missing, underage teenage girl on the site. That discovery led to the arrest of the man who kidnapped the teenager. Additionally, a legal case was brought against pornographer Michael Pratt — now a fugitive — for allegedly coercing and deceiving more than 20 women into performing sexual acts for videos that were then uploaded to Pornhub. Pratt is also accused of producing child pornography and sex trafficking a minor.
When confronted last year by Canadian politicians, Antoon and Tassillo maintained their innocence and claimed to have no awareness of illegal content hosted by Pornhub.
In a statement to Variety, a representative for MindGeek said Antoon and Tassillo are leaving “day-to-day operations after more than a decade in leadership positions with the company.”
“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,” the spokesperson added, noting the transition has been in the works since early this year.
Due to the intense backlash Pornhub has faced since 2020, MindGeek — whose pornography sites see some 150 million visitors daily — has started requiring users to upload an authenticated, government-issued identification card before being allowed to publish content. That, of course, is still not fool-proof, as there is no real way to verify consent or to confidently validate the ages of those in videos or photos.
As Christians, of course, it is clear pornography of all kinds is sinful and falls outside God’s perfect design for human relationships and sexuality. Scripture states all human beings are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and ought to be treated with the utmost respect (Psalm 139:14). Believers are given clear perimeters for sexuality: Sex is intended to be confined to the marriage bed between one man and one woman (Hebrews 13:4) and any sexual desire or action outside of that is sinful (Matthew 5:28).
***As the number of voices facing big-tech censorship continues to grow, please sign up for Faithwire’s daily newsletter and download the CBN News app, developed by our parent company, to stay up-to-date with the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***