MONTREAL — MindGeek’s top two executives, Feras Antoon and David Tassillo, gave an unprecedented interview to a Vanity Fair reporter, published today, where they weigh in on the current War on Porn and the still-unsolved arson that destroyed Antoon’s mansion in April 2021.
The execs offered a number of insights to Vanity Fair’s Adam Gollner, who has been working on the piece for months.
The Vanity Fair piece was the first public interview by CEO Antoon in over a decade, and the first interview ever given by COO Tassillo.
Antoon told Gollner that they had agreed to the interview because continuing to avoid the press “could come off as wanting to be dodgy.”
“Now we’re at a place where it’s important to be transparent,” Antoon added. “I think when you don’t hear people speak on behalf of the company, it’s easy to assume that we’re just ‘shadowy porn guys.’ And that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Antoon said he saw flagship site Pornhub as something that could become “a household name that destigmatized porn […] an adult entertainment company that operates with equal parts irreverence and professionalism.”
Antoon and Tassillo Finally Speak
Most of Gollner’s published interview with Antoon concerns the fire that engulfed his future home in April 2021, an act of arson that involved two trespassers, though to date Montreal police still have not solved the case nor publicly identified any suspects or motives.
Antoon’s only comment about the scorched-earth campaign against Pornhub, waged by Exodus Cry, Laila Mickelwait and her media-ballyhooed “Traffickinghub” campaign, was a general one stating that “any suggestion that we allow or encourage illegal content is completely untrue and defies rational reason, from both a moral and business standpoint.”
MindGeek’s CEO left it to his COO Tassillo to provide the business answers for the Vanity Fair reporter.
“People expect a super-erotic vibe, but it’s like walking into a bank,” Tassillo said, describing the MindGeek offices, currently emptied out by Montreal’s strict work-at-home pandemic regulations.
Tassillo told Gollner that they had avoided giving interviews because they “always felt the brand, and what people saw on the site, would speak for itself.”
In the article, Gollner opines that this tack was “part of what had landed them in this mess. A hands-off management approach had allowed users to post whatever they wanted, which inevitably led to a rise in problematic videos — which spoke for themselves.”
Trying to Become “The New Playboy”
Asked if he was bothered by the ongoing litigation — often coordinated by lawfare-waging War on Porn professionals like NCOSE, former Trump and Jerry Falwell Jr. lawyer Michael Bowe and obsessive anti-Pornhub self-promoter and erstwhile Exodus Cry apparatchik Mickelwait — Tassillo answered that “as a business owner, obviously it’s on your mind. But as something that is going to destroy the business? No, I’m not worried about that — I’m not going anywhere. We’ll keep striving toward that goal of becoming even more of that brand.”
Tassillo spoke about his goal of making the Pornhub brand “the new Playboy,” by which he meant “a responsible brand working in the adult space.”
The MindGeek COO added they were willing to partner “with anyone looking to make the industry safer and better, anyone that has the same goal as us to eliminate all of this [CSAM or so-called “revenge porn”] from the internet and outside of the internet — because that’s where it all starts, right?”
Echoing Antoon, Tassillo emphasized that “there’s zero value” in having such material on Pornhub. “If my goal is to become that household name that represents adult content and I allow this stuff to be on,” he noted, “I’m shooting myself in the foot. SNL would never feel comfortable making a skit about us.”
Tassillo also told Vanity Fair that Pornhub’s ascent had had a positive impact on people’s sexuality.
“We created a platform that allows any content creator to create whatever matters to them,” he stated. “Through that, people [can] experiment and see things they might not even know they might be into. I think it’s actually allowed people to be a little more honest about themselves.”
Montreal: Unsolved Arson
Antoon spoke at length to Gollner about the April 2021 arson. “I was building the house of my dreams,” he said. “And everything was going great.”
He had chosen the location because “it’s a quiet street with few cars” and it was within walking distance of where he grew up.
Arriving at the scene of the fire, he told Gollner, “I was devastated.”
“I don’t want to accuse anyone until I know the facts,” he added. “I can’t even count how many comments I saw from people saying to burn the company or my house down. For a while, it was easy to dismiss the tweets as just people on the internet talking. Then my house burned down.”
Gollner wrote that Antoon “saw a direct link between fundamentalists’ exhortations and the fire at his home.”
“Could the extreme religious groups have incited and encouraged someone to do this? Absolutely,” he said. “When you use extremist language and QAnon sentiment toward child trafficking, your words are going to attract and mobilize some of the darkest corners of the internet.”
To read “XXX-Files: Who Torched the Pornhub Palace?” visit VanityFair.com.