> How do you get from 'opinion piece in a newspaper' to 'gigantic transnational financial infrastructure company changes its rules'? In my experience, huge companies do not make changes like this purely on the basis of newspaper columns.

The amounts are minor as far as payment processors are concerned, but those payment processors want to avoid governments getting up their grill.

By acting "proactively" on anything which smells of controversial or bad PR (and nothing does that more than accusations of child trafficking, not even actual child trafficking), regulators see "self regulation" and go look at something else.