Hassan Youssef is the traditional rags-to-riches tale. Born in Quebec, Canada, to immigrant Lebanese moms and dads, he climbed his method to large riches by constructing an electronic realm– initially in pornography, and currently in enjoyment information.
The owner and chief executive officer of Valnet, based in Montreal, possesses Screen Rant, Collider, Motion PictureWe b and the comics information website CBR, which according to the company, jointly drives 260 million web page sights on a monthly basis.
In the previous years, Valnet has actually scooped up a lot of the separately possessed fan-facing information websites and is regularly looking for to get even more, routinely sending out pitch e-mails to independent material proprietors to get them out and include website traffic to its on-line juggernaut.
“Valnet has one clear goal: become the greatest content and digital investment company the world has ever seen,” flaunted a news release introducing the procurement of technology website How-To Geek in 2023. The firm does not divulge profits.
Lately, Valnet has actually been looking for trustworthiness in Hollywood, such as with a March 11 testing Q&A and red carpeting occasion at The Grove in Los Angeles, including Oscar- winning author Hans Zimmer in honor of “the launch of music divisions on Collider and ScreenRant,” as a news release kept in mind. Collider owner and editor-in-chief Steven Weintraub was the mediator.
But there’s a crease in this tale of a bootstrapping business owner. When Valnet takes control of a follower website, the playbook is well developed: workers are changed by professionals, payment plummets and authors that grumble arrive at a blacklist that obstructs them from benefiting Valnet websites entirely.
The Cover spoke with 15 present and previous factors that stated Valnet consistently ventures and discards authors while focusing on mass amount over top quality to create mind-numbing search engine optimization lure.
“Everyone is underpaid, overworked and really pretty — extremely — exploited,” a previous Collider factor informed The Cover.
“They are a company without clear objectives or morals who present themselves as a safe haven for young and experienced writers, but they end up paying bargain-basement rates and forcing contractors to create junky clickbait,” a previous Valnet factor informed The Cover on problem of privacy out of concern of revenge.
Now among those consultants has actually submitted a claim asserting overbearing job problems, and is looking for to develop a course activity versusValnet Daniel Quintiliano’s suit looks for $40,000 for infractions consisting of stopping working to pay base pay, overtime, offer dish or remainder breaks and compensate overhead. The amount is unimpressive, yet the possibility of expanding this throughout a course of professionals has Valnet alarmed– the firm is currently looking for authorized launches from its professionals to not take part in any type of course activity suits versus the firm for $100 repayment.
Few have actually approved the deal, and a brand-new deal has actually headed out … for simply $200.
The Valnet Blacklist
Valnet might locate it has couple of allies in the composing swimming pool, due to the fact that one more running strategy of the firm is blacklisting those that are regarded as challenging.
The Cover has actually acquired a spread sheet of greater than 400 “2025 Blacklisted Freelancers,” as the file is entitled. When examined regarding this, Valnet decreased to comment. In an interior e-mail inadvertently sent to The Cover, a Valnet exec stated to one more, “our documents are being leaked.”
The listing is an amazing brochure of objection or regarded transgression tracked thoroughly. “Applied to Screen Rant and went to Twitter with the rates,” one access claims. Another consultant was blacklisted for “creating drama” by “discouraging a past writer from returning,” while others encountered a Valnet restriction for calling prices “abysmal” or asking for openness. One consultant that recommended Valnet consist of repayment info in task listings was completely prohibited. (The Cover has actually passed out the authors’ names.)
Other objections pointed out on the spread sheet: “extremely rude and aggressive with hiring associate over rates and demanded a salary job”; “Combative, rude and argumentative with HR over pay”; and “Poor attitude, created drama via Writers Google Group email chain by discouraging a past writer from returning — speaking poorly about Screen Rant editorial team and company as a whole while being an active writer.”
A representative for Valnet stated he was not available for remark due to the fact that he got on holiday.
An M&An exec connected to The Cover stating the firm would certainly not go through “coercion” in reacting, yet did not react to any type of certain inquiries.
“I’d like to bluntly ask you: What is Umberto trying to achieve?” asked head of M&A Rony Arzoumanian in an e-mail. “Valnet invests tens of $millions in content, annually. We support journalism and would gladly welcome your questions.” He did not react to more e-mails or call.
“Valnet doesn’t care about exclusivity or quality,” stated an expert knowledgeable about electronic posting. “They arbitrage web traffic. They chase keywords in the same way day traders chase stocks. It’s quick gains over actual content. Their strategy treats digital content like a commodity. They flood the market with stories optimized for clicks rather than insight or originality.”
From foosball to electronic pornography realm
Hassan Youssef might be obscure in the clubby globe of enjoyment, and there’s a great factor for that. A civil designer by training, he ventured right into material development after leaving an on-line pornography organization that he efficiently constructed with his sibling Sam and others, but that ended with a $6 million seizure of their funds by the Secret Service for supposed cash laundering in 2009 prior to paying a $2.2 million penalty.
The beginnings of Valnet can be mapped back to Montreal’s affordable foosball circuit, according to a 2011 New York Magazine investigatory record entitled, “The Geek-Kings of Smut.”
In 2003, while still pupils, foosball gamers Matt Keezer, Stephane Manos, Sam Youssef and his sibling Hassan made a decision to enter into the globe of on-line pornography. Together, they began their very first internet sites, with names like Jugg World, Ass Listing, KeezMovies and XXX Rated Chicks.
“We started with $5,000, and we grew the company … Everything happened gradually. We had a little money, we reinvested it,” Sam Youssef informed The Montreal Journal last year.
Their endeavor confirmed widely successful. The team quickly increased, developing their very own associate network (Jugg Cash) and their very own paysite, Brazzers– called after a personal joke, a “throaty immigrant-Arabonics variation of ‘brothers,’” according to the report.
The company went from 80 employees in 2007 to 250 by 2009. Sam Youssef emerged as the business visionary, while Manos handled sales and motivation. Hassan did analytics. Keezer became a wizard of algorithms and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), helping their websites dominate search for adult keywords. It was their mastery of SEO that would help them later, as they expanded to more outwardly legitimate fan sites, helping their sites consistently rank at the top of Google searches.
Under the Brazzers brand, the company would develop a reputation for high quality productions, outsourcing the content creation for the websites to porn producers in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Miami. The founders maintained a low profile and stayed under the radar amid their growing success.
They operated through a complex web of corporate entities, with the main business housed under the name “Mansef” — a combination of the names Manos and Youssef. In January 2007, Keezer bought the domain name pornhub.com for $2,750 and went online through a separate company called Interhub. The Brazzers group were silent partners.
But Interhub ran into trouble in 2009 when British teenager Rose Kalemba discovered her rape as a 14-year-old broadcast on Pornhub. Kalemba pleaded to have the content removed for over six months, but was ignored. Kalemba’ s rape was seen over 400,00 times.
“The titles of the videos were ‘teen crying and getting slapped around’, ‘teen getting destroyed’, ‘passed out teen’. One had over 400,000 views,” Rose told the BBC “The worst videos were the ones where I was passed out. Seeing myself being attacked where I wasn’t even conscious was the worst.” The video clip was lastly eliminated after Kalemba established a brand-new e-mail address impersonating a legal representative and sent out Pornhub an e-mail harmful lawsuit.
By 2009, prior to they attracted the interest of government detectives, the Montreal- based venture had actually turned into among the biggest grown-up enjoyment procedures online, with the owners keeping workplaces in both Canada and theUnited States Their success in grown-up enjoyment would inevitably offer the funding and the search engine optimization playbook that Hassan Youssef would ultimately use a couple of years later on in his pivot right into mainstream electronic media posting.
Federal examination and business change
In October 2009, the UNITED STATE Secret Service’s Organized Fraud Task Force confiscated $6.4 million from 2 Mansef checking account,according to New York magazine Federal detectives revealed over $9 million in cable transfers from Israel, and the feds stated that had actually been wired right into both accounts over a three-month duration from financial institutions in Israel and various other nations on financial-fraud watch checklists. Of the $6.4 million that was taken, the federal government returned $4.15 million and $2.2 million of the amount was surrendered in a negotiation submitted with the court.
In March 2010, the owners made a decision to leave on-line pornography and offered their grown-up enjoyment possessions to German business person Fabian Thylmann, that paid $140 million forPornhub com and its associated buildings consisting of Brazzers, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
Thylmann transformed the firm’s name from Mansef to Manwin, yet the Youssef bros were out.
From grown-up enjoyment to enjoyment media
After marketing Mansef in 2010, Hassan and Sam Youssef took a while off prior to introducing brand-new endeavors. They established Valnet in August 2012. By 2015, after losing money investing in gyms and real estate, Sam Youssef established Valsoft Corporation, concentrating on obtaining and enhancing existing software program firms.
Despite making their ton of money in on-line pornography, the Youssef bros have actually rubbed any type of reference of Mansef or their grown-up enjoyment beginnings from their public identities of the Valnet site.
The Valnet websites offer enthusiastic followers of movie, tv, computer game and comics and require significant range website traffic to generate income off programmatic advertising and marketing.
Remnants of the flick blog site prime times of the late 2000s and 2010s when websites like Ain’ t It Cool News made a mark, these Valnet- possessed internet sites greatly work as fan-focused gathering, discourse and listicle databases concentrated on motion pictures, TELEVISION, comics and pc gaming. Many short articles are created to take full advantage of customer involvement (and zealous contract or argument) with actively inflammatory headings like “Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Perfect Replacement as the Terminator Is So Obvious, I Can’t Believe It Hasn’t Happened Yet.”
The present state of these internet sites mirror a Valnet playbook to take full advantage of clicks and income. Once obtained, prices for consultants at several of these websites went down from $150 for testimonials to $40, according to several consultants that spoke with The Cover. The present price for testimonials is currently also reduced at $30. Access to medical insurance and advantages vaporized as full time workers were rehired as at-will professionals, they stated.
“I had written for Collider a couple of times prior to its Valnet acquisition, at a time when the freelance rate I was paid was $250 an article,” a previous factor stated. “But soon after Valnet got involved, that rate dropped to $40.”
Content designers affirm exploitation
According to one more previous factor, Collider keeps “a content mill, borderline like almost sweatshop-level” where thousands of authors are “constantly being pushed to write more, to do it quicker,” while editors deal with “pretty high level of quotas” in spite of being understaffed. The previous factor additionally affirmed a pattern of shooting workers that examined firm techniques and remembered being called right into a conference where the person was informed “you should quit if you think it’s so bad here.”
In a meeting with The Cover, previous Valnet author Stephanie Ann Grant in-depth her experience benefiting Valnet’s “The Travel” upright. After approving an agreement for $30 per released short article onOct 3, 2024, Grant defined being instantly shut out of Valnet onOct 23, 2024. She got no reaction from editors for 6 hours prior to obtaining an e-mail introducing the discontinuation of her agreement.
“I then emailed the head of HR and then Valnet’s legal department. It appeared that Valnet had ghosted me,” Grant stated. When her very first income stopped working to show up onNov 1, Grant claims her e-mails went unanswered for days till she got reasons that “it didn’t go through.”
Only after publishing regarding her experience on ConnectedIn did she get repayment– though she stated she was still shorted $65.
“I checked my PayPal account settings to make sure it wasn’t a problem on my end, and as a freelance writer, this was the only time I’ve ever had someone having a ‘problem’ paying me,” Grant stated.
Valnet decreased to react to inquiries regarding Grant’s experience.
According to the legal complaint filed by former MovieWeb writer Daniel Quintiliano, authors need to send to “Valnet’s complete and total discretion as to approval or revision of the work product”– a degree of oversight that the legal action says is irregular with independent service provider standing under California legislation. The legal action information that Quintiliano routinely generated regarding 3 to 4 FilmWe b short articles each day, 5 days or even more weekly, investing about a couple of hours per short article. Despite the extensive work, he was paid just $15 per short article without added payment.
Valnet remains to strongly increase its profile of consumer-facing internet sites, sending out procurement questions and looking for lawful launches from consultants while chief executive officer Hassan Youssef continues to be greatly behind the scenes.
The previous Collider factor stated: “In journalism, there are really bad jobs. And then there is a place like Valnet,” including it’s “one of the worst places that I’ve ever worked and is probably one of the worst journalism publications I’ve ever seen.”
The blog post Valnet Blues: How Online Porn Pioneer Hassan Youssef Built a Digital Media ‘Sweatshop’ showed up initially on TheWrap.
