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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, in this particular case huge companies did make changes on the basis of this newspaper column. It's not common, but it's what happened here.

It was an incredibly visible and influential accusation that seemingly came out of nowhere from arguably the most prestigious newspaper in the country, and legitimate businesses like PornHub and MasterCard are terrified of brand association with child porn and sex trafficking -- if those stuck, it's corporate suicide.

You're right that most opinion pieces don't make a shred of difference. But this particular one, because of the seriousness of the allegation combined with its plausibility, did in a big way.

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> businesses like PornHub and MasterCard are terrified of brand association with child porn and sex trafficking

With PornHub that makes sense because the type of content they provide is the crux of their businesss.

But does anyone care or know what MasterCard is associated with? I would not even think to blame PG&E for providing electricity, even if the recipient turned out to be doing some super illegal things with that electricity.

So I am not convinced by reputation damage to payment processors. I am more convinced by unacceptably high chargebacks and fraud, but even there it is hard to explain the about face that payment processors have made here. Curious!

If PG&E weren't compelled by law to provide their services to all, I know they would cave to similar pressure w.r.t CSAM...

"Your company provided the electricity to take these pictures. Now that you know are you going to continue to facilitate known predators?"

> But does anyone care or know what MasterCard is associated with?

The average layperson would care if MasterCard got hit with a headline like:

"MasterCard processed payments for Very Bad People for months/years!".

Layperson: Guess I'm calling my congressman and switching to Visa!

I assume MasterCard would (a) retain some very good PR firms to assist with keeping their image clean and (b) distance themselves from anything that might tarnish their image, like, well, regular porn websites.

Would they though? I very rarely consider which credit card processor I'm using - it's what card has the best interest/rewards/whatever, or what logo does my personal bank use on their debit cards. It's not like I can go to my bank and say "I'm done with the mastercard debit card, give me your visa debit card please"

> it's what [credit] card has the best interest/rewards/whatever

...and doesn't have a reputation in the toilet.

Would you get a SatanCard(tm)? Generous 10% cash back rewards but we make our money by extorting the elderly, killing kids, addicting adolescents to hard drugs, profiteering on pollution in your hometown, kicking puppies on video, and if you die we come after your family for the money, regardless of local laws.

I bet MasterCard and the others have profited from literally everything on your list. They are too big not to have.

I mean, I know it's not -at all- the same but that was kind of a staple for Bitcoin. Hasn't seemed to bother anybody...

The story [1] literally called them out: "And call me a prude, but I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa."

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...

I feel like the better comparison is what happened with Craigslist and Backpage. Their elevator pitch business model sounded legit but anyone that sniffed around knew what the site was predominantly focused on. CL was more diversified in terms of site usage, revenue, etc and could easily just ban adult services when the heat turned up. Backpage was just a front for sex work. There was no material classifieds business beyond adult services. A small percentage which could potentially be of the trafficked variety that brought on the heat. They made some dumb choices that contributed to their demise but only because of the bullseye that was put on them by the trafficking rhetoric. It feels to me like OF has either been told an investigation is occurring/likely to occur and is trying to soften any future blows -or- they are just being proactive knowing that this risk is present and would kill their company if it came down to it.

You say "it's what happened here" and "But this particular one, because of the seriousness of the allegation combined with its plausibility, did in a big way" - but you haven't actually provided any evidence for it, just repeated assertions that it's true.

Can you show anything aside from just speculation?

It's literally been all over the news, with journalists and analysts directly linking the column with the changes at both PornHub in December and at MasterCard in April -- and these are the people who follow this professionally. You can Google it yourself trivially, you don't need to ask someone on HN to get it.

But if you somehow don't trust that and you're asking for someone to report on the confidential goings-on of internal meetings at MasterCard and nothing else will satisfy you, you're not going to get that here on HN.

Ok, well for those of us that didn't read the exact same set of articles you did, you sound like a guy making stuff up...so send some links.

This article from December 2020 exactly supports what OP is saying- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/10/pornhub-mast...

Just like you, I hadn't read the exact same articles as GP. But I was able to find this article in seconds on google as GP suggested.

> It's literally been all over the news, with journalists and analysts directly linking the column with the changes at both PornHub in December and at MasterCard in April

This is not evidence of a link. What they have said might contain evidence of a link, in which case i'd be interested to hear it. But the job of talking heads on the news is to construct compelling narratives from facts they have to hand, regardless of whether those narratives are true, so the fact that they were talking about this is just noise.

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr...

Given PornHub removed a bunch of videos after that article came out, it seems reasonable to conclude that either the article was responsible, or the article made the idea popular enough. At this point, I’m not sure what the difference is, but I am sure that people denying the article played a role are the ones speculating here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornhub

> In December 2020, following a New York Times article on such content, payment processors Mastercard and Visa cut their services to Pornhub. On 14 December 2020, Pornhub removed all videos by unverified users.[15] This reduced the content from 13 million to 4 million videos.[16]

not just pornhub but from all their other sites too. huge amount of content vanished

This was posted in another thread here, but it seems that activist investor Bill Ackman was the link in this case, and his personal interest (and general notoriety for extremely aggressive attacks on companies he believes are vulnerable) almost certainly played a part in him making this a five-alarm fire at Mastercard:

> Ackman, who has four daughters, was outraged when he read how one teenager ended up a Pornhub victim... An influential shareholder activist, Ackman immediately thought about the growing interest in ethical, or ESG, investing... He was friendly with Mastercard’s then-CEO Ajay Banga, whom he had met through a mutual friend. Ackman texted Banga, providing a link to Kristof’s story with his tweet: “Amex, VISA and MasterCard should immediately withhold payments or withdraw until this is fixed. PayPal has already done so.” ... Banga quickly wrote back: “We’re on it.”

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ackman

> in this particular case huge companies did make changes on the basis of this newspaper column

Well, they made changes based on the popular reaction to a newspaper column. I’m not sure why you’d point fingers at the column when the obvious reality is that it simply reflects societal norms.

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