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What was the mechanism causing Visa and Mastercard to halt payments? Is this a case of explicitly public lobbying (or fear thereof) or internal company moral stuff?

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Huge missed opportunity for the internal plural in that line about the attorneys general and craigslist. Otherwise good post.

While your argument was about *non*-governmental actors serving the role of regulators, this feels quite similar to the Matt Levine "everything is securities fraud" point about the SEC, which is a government regulator, acting as regulators for a whole host of not-really-financial wrongdoings because it's easier to brand pollution as securities fraud than it is to actually get Congress and the EPA to regulate it.

Also probably related: employees/customers of tech companies demanding those companies don't accept ICE as a customer.

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The main point is well-taken, although while the story about pre-revolutionary France was very interesting I am not convinced of the analogy - these payment services have too much control, but they are offering some version of a non-rent-seeking service, and in general their incentives to serve most sites are approximately aligned with the sites.

I imagine both Visa and Mastercard would enjoy if this situation was taken out of their hands to a degree in the sense that they could become (nearly?) obligated to offer services to anyone who wasn't barred by the government, but I suspect I haven't thought this through enough. In theory, this would be better for Pornhub and their customers (maybe) too.

Where are Discover in all this, wont_somebody_think_of_the_children.jpg etc??

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Interesting piece. The Pornhub situation itself didn't bother me much and it does sound like a lot of shady stuff was happening there, like not respecting the owners of the content, but I hadn't considered where else it could go. Potential slippery slope to consider. Corporations are getting pressured to get involved in various social causes so could this be a next step.

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Could your concern also apply to TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax?

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