As someone who witnessed them eating up ALL their competition first hand, you're right. They bought EVERYONE out. in my time in the adult industry I worked for 3 separate companies and Manwin bought them all. TWICE I was offered a job by them and to move to Montreal after being laid off from two companies that they bought and both times I turned them down simply because of their reputation within the industry.

One company I worked for was named Twistys/Pink Visual based in Toronto and they were bought by Manwin. A few people I know decided to move to Montreal to work at pornhub since they worked on Gaytube, SexTube, TrannyTube, etc and would be in charge of those sites at pornhub. They all moved back to Toronto within the spawn of a few months because it was a horrible place to work. Pornhub has always presented itself online as cool and hip to modern trends but behind the scenes it's anything but. I mean all the cool statistics and stuff they constantly present was built on the back of a guy from Tucson Arizona that worked for another porn company there that they bought. They promptly fired him after he essentially taught them his tools. Dude moved to Montreal from Arizona and everything. uprooted his family to move to Canada. He lasted maybe a year.

There was also a point where the adult actors were looking to unionize. It was largely spear headed by Sasha Grey. Manwin/Pornhub in part was very quick to squash that.

Super interesting. If you can find that episode, I'd love to give it a listen.