A lady will now be in charge of running PornHub’s public messaging as its new parent company looks to recover from the shocking allegations that the site allowed concerning activity to fester for long periods of time.
Ethical Capital Partners, who bought PornHub’s parent company MindGeek earlier this year, has named Alexzandra Kekesi as head of community and brand.
The move follows a string of public relations disasters including allegation’s of publishing revenge porn and child sex abuse, as well as being banned by Instagram for allegedly violating the social media site’s rules against sexual solicitation. This is in stark contrast to all the other porn business’s still running accounts on Instagram.
It seems Zuck only wanted PornHub gone after the New York Times articles emerged and gained traction in the media. Niche Porn Sites reached out to Meta for comment but have not heard back from them as yet.
Kekesi, a long time employee of Pornhub told the New York Post she is focused on ‘helping people to really understand what Pornhub is as a brand, what we stand for, what we represent’ including the site’s commitment to setting a ‘gold standard when it comes to moderation.’
‘As soon as there’s someone that’s a little bit more visible in terms of being able to be the one to engage with and it’s not just a faceless company or corporation, it makes it a little more inviting,’ Kekesi told the publication.
Kekesi is one of the few Pornhub executives whose identity is known to the public. We have written in the past about the history of PornHub and detailed all the founding members and how the site was first formed.
Prior to taking on the new role, she worked for PornHub’s parent company MindGeek for more than a decade, beginning with an entry-level marketing role for one of its affiliate sites before becoming PornHub’s director of marketing.
As head of community and brand, Kekesi’s responsibilities will include planning events like the annual Pornhub Awards and hosting a podcast called “Terms of Service” alongside adult film star Asa Akira that will tackle “censorship in the adult industry, arts and culture.”
When it comes to softening the brand’s image Kekesi may have her work cut out for her.
PornHub has been plagued for years by allegations its site hosts revenge porn, child sex abuse, and victims of sex-trafficking. PornHub has always denied any wrongdoing.
MindGeek, which boasts a daily audience of 125 million users across its sites, nearly collapsed in 2020 after the New York Times published a damning report about illegal content spread on PornHub.
In response, PornHub wiped millions of videos from its site and required all uploaded content going forward to come from verified users. In doing this the site lost a huge audience and dropped many places on our list of the top 50 free porn sites.
However, the Times report led Visa and Mastercard to strip the company of some access to their payments systems.
PornHub has also had its fair share of run-ins with state regulation.
The site blocked access for users in Utah in May after the state imposed a law requiring users to verify they were over 18 years old.
Last month, PornHub exited Virginia in protest of a similar restriction law.
There is not a lot of public information available on Ethical Capital Partners, the Canadian buyout firm that bought MindGeek. This seamed to be more as a necessary reaction to the New York Times article than anything of major substance.
Sarah Bain, an Ethical Capital partner and the firm’s vice president of public engagement told the Post this was simply because it was a private company. Obviously it would be crazy times to think that a company like this would ever not be a private company though.
‘I don’t think we’re being vague; I think we’re being really clear – we’re a private company,’ Bain said.
‘We’re not interested in companies that have it all figured out,’ Bain said.
‘We want to work with companies that have either lost social license, have pretty important regulatory requirements coming up, or have, in this case, a history of difficult social license.’
She added: ‘At some point, the adult industry will be normalized, it’s going to take a long time and it starts with being visible, open, speaking, telling the public what we’re doing. That’s how they become curious, that’s how they become knowledgeable.’ We are already seeing their normalization occurring due to the large scale adoption of sites like OnlyFans which has been used predominately for the sale of adult content.
Bain confirmed MindGeek’s CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo have not yet been replaced, after they resigned last summer but did not comment on the firm’s hierarchy further. You can read all about them in our article about the history of PornHub. This is also Ethical Partners first and only acquisition so far so one must question their real motives.
She argued that privacy is key as executives at the adult content site face unique risks, such as bad actors disclosing their personal information such as home addresses or parents’ names. Something that was evidenced by Feras Antoon’s recently built $19m mansion being burnt down by an arsonist on April 25, 2021.