3 ms·

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" -

by fouric 5y ago

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?

crazygringo 5y ago
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.
- navait 5y ago
  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.
  - angus-prune 5y ago
    This article from December 2020 exactly supports what OP is saying- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/10/pornhub-mastercard-visa-rape-child-abuse-images 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.
- twic 5y ago
  > 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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
speeder 5y ago
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr/Bill-Ackman-Sent-a-Text-to-the-CEO-of-Mastercard-What-Happened-Next-Is-a-Parable-for-ESG https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr...
isoskeles 5y ago
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 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]
- throwaway444590 5y ago
  not just pornhub but from all their other sites too. huge amount of content vanished
btown 5y ago
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/Bill-Ackman-Sent-a-Text-to-the-CEO-of-Mastercard-What-Happened-Next-Is-a-Parable-for-ESG https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ackman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ackman

by fouric 5y ago

crazygringo 5y ago

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.

navait 5y ago
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.
- angus-prune 5y ago
  This article from December 2020 exactly supports what OP is saying- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/10/pornhub-mastercard-visa-rape-child-abuse-images 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.
twic 5y ago
> 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.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

speeder 5y ago

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr/Bill-Ackman-Sent-a-Text-to-the-CEO-of-Mastercard-What-Happened-Next-Is-a-Parable-for-ESG https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr...

isoskeles 5y ago

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 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]

throwaway444590 5y ago
not just pornhub but from all their other sites too. huge amount of content vanished

btown 5y ago

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/Bill-Ackman-Sent-a-Text-to-the-CEO-of-Mastercard-What-Happened-Next-Is-a-Parable-for-ESG https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ackman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ackman