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!
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...
"Your company provided the electricity to take these pictures. Now that you know are you going to continue to facilitate known predators?"
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.
...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.
Can you show anything aside from just speculation?
> 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...
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.