In this guide
- Why ownership matters to performers
- 2007: a Montreal startup
- 2010: Fabian Thylmann and Manwin
- 2013: MindGeek is born
- The empire: tubes and studios under one roof
- 2020: the crisis
- 2023: Ethical Capital Partners and the rename to Aylo
- The legal reckoning
- Who really holds the power now
- My take
Ask a hundred men if they have visited Pornhub and most will laugh. Ask the same hundred who owns it, and you will get silence. That gap is not an accident. For most of its history, the company behind the world’s most famous porn site preferred to stay in the background.
For performers, though, the question matters a lot. The same company that runs the biggest free tube sites also owns some of the biggest studios that hire us. When one group controls both the free shop window and the paid factory, it shapes what gets made, what gets paid and what gets seen.
Here is the story, with sources.
Why ownership matters to performers
When I started, I thought like most young performers: a studio pays you, a site shows the scene, and that is the end of it. It took me years to understand the bigger picture. The free tube model, where millions of clips were uploaded and watched for free, crushed the value of paid scenes. I explained how in tube sites and piracy.
And the biggest tube sites ended up owned by the same group as many of the studios. That is what made the company so powerful, and so controversial.
2007: a Montreal startup
Pornhub was launched on 25 May 2007. It was founded by web developer Matt Keezer as a site within a Montreal-based company called Interhub (Wikipedia: Pornhub). The idea was simple and copied from YouTube: let people upload and stream videos for free, and make money from advertising and traffic.
It worked. Within a few years, Pornhub was one of the most visited sites on the internet.
2010: Fabian Thylmann and Manwin
In 2010, German entrepreneur Fabian Thylmann, who already owned several adult websites, bought the Montreal companies behind Pornhub and the Brazzers studio. He combined them into a group that became Manwin, and kept buying: more tube sites, webcam businesses and studios such as Digital Playground (Wikipedia: Aylo).
Thylmann’s story did not end well. In December 2012 he was arrested in Belgium in a tax evasion investigation, at Germany’s request. Shortly afterwards, he decided to sell.
2013: MindGeek is born
In October 2013, Thylmann sold Manwin to its senior managers, including Feras Antoon and David Tassillo. The company was renamed MindGeek. For the next decade, that was the name most of the industry knew, and feared.
When one company owns the free shop window and the paid factory, it decides what this industry is worth.
The empire: tubes and studios under one roof
Under MindGeek, the group controlled a long list of famous brands. On the free tube side: Pornhub, YouPorn, RedTube and Tube8. On the paid side: studios and networks such as Brazzers, Reality Kings, Digital Playground and Mofos, among others. It also ran an advertising network called TrafficJunky.
The scale was enormous. In its own 2019 Year in Review, Pornhub said it had received 42 billion visits that year (Pornhub Insights, 2019).
For performers, this concentration created a strange situation. A studio scene you shot could be sold on a paid site, while clips from it, or pirated copies, could appear for free on a tube owned by the same group. Many performers and independent producers complained for years that the model rewarded traffic over the people on camera.
2020: the crisis
On 4 December 2020, the New York Times published a column by Nicholas Kristof called “The Children of Pornhub,” alleging that the site hosted videos of child abuse and non-consensual content. Within days, Visa and Mastercard announced they would stop processing payments on Pornhub. The full story of that financial pressure is in my article on why banks and card networks fear porn.
Pornhub’s response was dramatic: it stopped allowing uploads from unverified users and removed millions of videos from unverified accounts. In early 2021, Antoon, Tassillo and another executive were questioned by the Canadian House of Commons ethics committee. In June 2022, Antoon and Tassillo resigned.
2023: Ethical Capital Partners and the rename to Aylo
On 16 March 2023, MindGeek announced it had been acquired by Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), a private equity firm based in Ottawa, Canada. The price was not disclosed (Reuters). In August 2023, the company rebranded as Aylo.
The new owners presented the sale and the new name as a reset: trust and safety first, verification of everyone who uploads, and support for age verification laws done through devices rather than individual websites. Critics said a new name does not erase old problems. Both things can be true.
The legal reckoning
The new owners inherited a heavy legal load.
- The GirlsDoPorn case. GirlsDoPorn was a criminal operation that tricked young women into filming sex scenes. Its owner was later convicted of sex trafficking. In December 2023, Aylo entered a deferred prosecution agreement with the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York over revenue it received linked to GirlsDoPorn. It agreed to pay about $1.8 million, accept an independent monitor for three years and compensate eligible victims (Reuters, December 2023; Aylo statement).
- The FTC and Utah. In September 2025, the US Federal Trade Commission and the State of Utah announced a settlement with Aylo over allegations that it deceived users about its efforts to stop child sexual abuse material and non-consensual content. The order included a $15 million judgment, with $5 million paid and the rest suspended, new verification and content-removal requirements, and independent audits every two years for ten years (Utah Department of Commerce / FTC release).
There were also many civil lawsuits from women whose videos had been posted without consent. Some are still ongoing.
Who really holds the power now
Today Aylo is still one of the most powerful companies in adult entertainment. But the world around it has changed:
- Age verification laws in many US states and other countries led Pornhub to block access in several places rather than check IDs on its own site. Pornhub blocked users in Utah in May 2023, and in June 2025 Aylo suspended access in France rather than comply with the French verification rules. I explained those laws in porn age verification laws.
- Payment processors now set many of the rules, not the sites.
- Creators have shifted power to subscription platforms like OnlyFans, where performers own their content and get the larger share of revenue.
The old model of free tubes funding a studio empire is weaker than it was. But the company that built it is still here, with a new name and new owners.
My take
I have worked in this industry for 14 years, and like almost every performer of my generation, I have seen my work circulate on sites owned by this group. I am not going to pretend it was all evil. Pornhub made porn mainstream, gave some performers a huge audience and, after 2020, finally adopted verification rules that should have existed from day one.
But I also saw what the free tube model did to performers’ pay, and I followed the stories of women who had to fight for years to get videos taken down. A company that profits from traffic should never be allowed to treat consent as a cost. If Aylo really wants to be different, the measure will not be its new name. It will be how it treats the people on camera.
For the human stories of the women in this industry, read my columns on House of Maximo. Follow my work at maximogarciaworld.com, and for the 18+ side, fuckingpornstars.net.
Sources
- Wikipedia. Pornhub.
- Wikipedia. Aylo.
- Reuters. Pornhub owner MindGeek sold to Canada’s Ethical Capital. March 2023.
- Reuters. Pornhub owner pays $1.8 mln to resolve US probe of sex trafficking ties. December 2023.
- Aylo. Aylo and the United States Attorney’s Office reach agreement.
- FTC and Utah. FTC takes action against operators of Pornhub and other pornographic sites. September 2025.
- Pornhub Insights. The 2019 Year in Review.
