Pornhub-owner MindGeek denied allegations from a non-profit organization that exposes sexual exploitation claiming more than half of its employees were likely laid off following the resignation of two of the company’s top executives on the same day.
Reuters reports that MindGeek’s Chief Executive Officer Feras Atoon and Chief Operation Officer David Tassillo resigned Tuesday after over a decade running the adult site company. The company also stated that, despite the departures of both executives earlier in the year, they will still be shareholders.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (the non-profit making the accusations) released a statement on Wednesday stating that they had not received any response. reported layoffsLayoffstracker.com has the following information: “are more evidence that the infrastructure of the pornography industry is crumbling and that MindGeek needs to be investigated.”
“It is no coincidence that MindGeek’s two top executives have fled amid a growing number of lawsuits we and other law firms have filed on behalf of sex trafficking survivors whose abuse has been shown on Pornhub,”Dawn Hawkins was the centre’s CEO. “And because of the intense outcry from survivors, advocates, corporations, and even from news outlets like the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the BBC that revealed Pornhub’s criminality.”
MindGeek said that these allegations were made by The Daily Wire. “categorically false.”
According to MindGeek’s LinkedIn page, the company employs over 1,400 workers worldwide, but according to former employees, the company has undergone major restructuring, causing multiple teams and employees to face layoffs.
MindGeek was subject to a suit last year alleging that the company had violated child pornography laws and federal sextrafficking laws. According to Reuters, credit card companies Visa and Mastercard had to stop processing payment on Pornhub after a New York Times report revealed illegal content.
Hawkins stated that MindGeek had faced many survivors over the past decade about their child or sex abuse and that they were filmed, uploaded, monetized and made available for download. This was shared on numerous MindGeek websites and Pornhub.
“Pornhub has profited from the mass distribution of filmed sexual crime as well as non-consensually recorded and non-consensually uploaded videos,”Hawkins claimed.
Hawkins called for the United States’ to bring Pornhub criminal exploitation charges, given that the site has servers within the United States.
“As long as pornography tube sites don’t have to ensure that all who are depicted in explicit material have truly consented to participate or that all are actually adults, more criminality will happen in this pernicious industry,”Sie said. “Currently there are no such regulations for pornography tube sites, and as a result, thousands of victims are powerless in removing recordings of their abuse while Pornhub and other websites make millions of dollars from their trauma.”
A virtual U.S. Congressional briefing was held in 2021. The nonprofit presented evidence about the criminality of Pornhub, and also included testimony from survivors.
Multiple civil suits have been filed against Pornhub by victims of trafficking and children who were sexually abused in America and Canada.
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