But it's hard to say. Mastercard is now saying that they never said or did anything. So where did the outrage come from? Someone must have done something.
It sure is tragic that benevolent and majestic Mastercard is having their name thrown into the mud over this. Coincidentally, it sure is convenient that they have a number of middleman scapegoats who can take the blame on their behalf.
There's even a (non-public) list of keyword banned terms.
Even the (rare) categories of content that have been legally determined to be non-obscene (e.g., werewolf erotica [1]) can fall under banned keywords (in this case, “bestiality”).
It’s a stupid extralegal system and ought to be destroyed.
[1] https://time.com/archive/7118599/california-prisoner-fights-...
As far as I'm aware, the Collective Shout letter caused a "formal card network inquiry" to originate from both Mastercard and Visa. I did not have access to the actual inquiry, but my assumption is that it wasn't "we see this content, take it down" and more like "we saw this letter, look into whats going on before we do our own investigation and fine you"