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Comment by cataphract | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure it is. When people hear "PornHub is disseminating / profiting off revenge porn", does anyone think "shame on their payment processors"? I think the outrage is directed at the operators of the websites themselves.

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People with only outrage won't think about their payment processors. Those with outrage who think through their options to enact change will think of their payment processors, and direct group pressure on them.

I'm very skeptical that anyone would think through this scenario and arrive at boycotting an entire payment network. Not just PornHubs bank, or payment processor, but an entire credit card network. And of those that did, I doubt it would be a big enough group for Mastercard to even notice. Unless that 'someone' is a major institution like Bank of America, or the federal government.

It doesn't take many people to agitate, if they are sufficiently unpleasant and noisy and can't be easily written off as cranks.

They don't need to boycott it - financial regulators can and have come down on banks and payment processors for allowing 'morally dubious businesses' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point] such as payday lenders, firearms related companies, porn producers, and many more. There is a long history of this type of thing happening, and no one wants to get near an industry where their underlying ability to bank (and therefore interact with the financial system at all) can be yanked with a phone call.

Payment processor scenario: you need to select one, for example for the POS in your new grocery store. Your fanatical friend says that the evil heathens at provider X support porn and you should avoid payments from X. You want to appease your friend, even if you don't want to boycott porn; on the other side of the balance, in favor of using provider X anyway, no compelling business or moral reason.

This has nothing to do with boycotts or consumer choice. It's about regulation. If payment processors don't crack down the government will. No one votes for pedos.

Has anybody in history ever said "I'm cutting up my MasterCard because this porn site takes it!"

Organizing a boycott like that seems almost impossible. There just isn't enough realistic competition and going back to paper checks is just not happening, especially online.

Not many, but it just takes a few of the "right" people who know how to pull the strings: https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr...

Some of this is going to come down to legal liability. Someone who suffers because of child or revenge porn at OF or PH might realize that there isn't enough money at those companies and will instead direct lawsuits at "the companies that enabled the behavior." Even if unsuccessful, the legal fees could be enormous.

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