An investigation into who owns MindGeek, the secretive company behind Pornhub, which had $460M in revenue in 2018 and has 115M+ daily visitors to its sites
Mario Salieri was shooting a pornographic movie in a lavish Prague villa two decades ago when he first caught sight of the computer geeks who were about to upend his industry. Tweets: @lailamickelwait , @alexhern , @mattgarrahan , @b50 , @josephstash , and @alexhern See also Mediagazer Tweets: Laila Mickelwait / @lailamickelwait : PORNHUB EXPOSED: The secret shareholder of Pornhub/Mindgeek is a man named Bernard Bergemar who has kept himself deep in the shadows until now. There is nothing that Pornhub has hidden that will not be brought to light. #Traffickinghub https://www.ft.com/... Alex Hern / @alexhern : Stellar investigative work https://www.ft.com/... Matthew Garrahan / @mattgarrahan : Fascinating look at Bernard Bergemar, the world's biggest porn baron behind RedTube and PornHub. He controls a vast empire through a network of companies - but all mention of him seems to have been completely scrubbed from the internet https://www.ft.com/... Anupam Gupta / @b50 : Wow! “Every day, roughly 15 terabytes worth of videos get uploaded to MindGeek's sites, equivalent to roughly half of the content available to watch on Netflix.” https://www.ft.com/... @josephstash : Remember when Theresa May almost made MindGeek the arbiters of age verification on the internet 😬 https://www.ft.com/... Alex Hern / @alexhern : Something that's worth remembering: Theresa May wanted to make Mindgeek, the owners of Pornhub, the de facto regulator of age verification on the UK internet. They came within *days* of passing the required legislation. See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
MindGeek has been one of the internet's biggest black boxes: Quartz's 2018 profile established its scale — nine of the top fifteen porn sites worldwide, bandwidth exceeding Facebook's or Amazon's — while its ownership stayed hidden. A year earlier, the UK nearly handed the company regulatory power over itself via outsourced age verification, a plan that failed days before passage.
The FT's investigation changes the accountability equation by naming Bernard Bergemar as the controlling shareholder behind a network of shell entities, giving campaigns like Laila Mickelwait's #Traffickinghub a specific target for their criticism over trafficking and moderation.
First-order effects
- Bergemar loses his anonymity: activists and journalists now have a named principal to hold responsible for Pornhub's moderation record, converting diffuse platform criticism into personal accountability.
- MindGeek's leadership must answer for governance structures built to obscure who profits from $460M in revenue and 15 terabytes of daily uploads.
Second-order effects
- Sustained investigative pressure compounds: within eighteen months the scrutiny contributes to the resignation of MindGeek's CEO and COO after reporting on nonconsensual videos, showing how naming ownership accelerates executive consequences.
- Reputational exposure eventually forces an exit at the top: private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners acquires MindGeek in 2023, replacing the shadowy individual-owner structure exposed by the investigation.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, massive user-generated-content platforms can no longer rely on layered shell-company ownership to insulate principals from moderation controversies — ownership transparency becomes a liability regulators and campaigners will keep pulling on.
- The failed UK age-verification episode shows governments were already willing to make MindGeek a de facto regulator; named ownership gives future legislation a concrete counterparty to negotiate with or constrain.
The trend: Opaque mega-platforms are being forced toward identifiable ownership and accountable moderation as investigations, activist campaigns, and regulation converge on who actually controls them.