MindGeek's CEO and COO quit abruptly days after a New Yorker probe of Pornhub

On June 21, 2022, MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub, confirmed that CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo had resigned effective immediately, remaining shareholders while the executive leadership team ran day-to-day operations on an interim basis and a search for replacements got underway. Variety first reported the departures; MindGeek told TechCrunch they were planned and that there was 'absolutely no correlation between any other reporting and today's news.'

The resignations came six days after The New Yorker published an investigation describing years of situations in which Pornhub's moderation processes had failed, including people who tried and failed to get imagery of themselves removed from the platform. MindGeek called the report a 'gross mischaracterization' and pointed to NCMEC statistics it said showed Pornhub reported and removed child sexual abuse material faster than other major platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The pressure had been building for two years. In 2020, Mastercard and Visa both suspended payments to MindGeek companies over the site's hosting of illegal content — Visa later relented somewhat — and the company resorted to recommending cryptocurrency payments. TechCrunch noted the two executives left immediately, with no succession plan beyond an interim team, after what it called an unceremonious exit that gave 'the air of leaving the scene of an accident.'

Mastercard and Visa suspended payments to MindGeek companies in 2020; the CEO and COO left effective immediately with no succession plan.

Moderation failures at scale became the company's defining press story, contested but never fully dispelled.

The payment networks' 2020 suspensions showed how dependent the business was on infrastructure partners willing to look away.

The abrupt, succession-less exit drained leadership credibility exactly when the company needed to demonstrate control.

Trust debt compounds quietly: a platform that defers moderation investment keeps the revenue — until the payments stop, the press arrives, and the executives absorb it.

An interim executive team ran MindGeek while the board searched for replacements; both former executives stayed on as shareholders. The article reported no regulatory outcome and no immediate commercial figures, and MindGeek maintained its position that its moderation met or beat industry norms on takedown speed.