how would a group hound the processors in the other direction?

also, how are these "puritan" groups doing the hounding? I mean, are they threatening some kind of legal action? based on old (or not so old) obscenity laws?

could the against hounding group do the same? on what legal basis? or is it enough to do the usual "securities fraud" angle?

maybe what matters is how much money the hounding group credibly has to spend on lawyers?

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armada651 2 days ago | parent [-]

> also, how are these "puritan" groups doing the hounding? I mean, are they threatening some kind of legal action? based on old (or not so old) obscenity laws?

They're not suing them in civil court, they're threatening to use the court of public perception against them. If they allow these payments the activism groups will set up a campaign titled something like "Visa facilitates incest and child abuse!" and "Mastercard allows you to see women getting beaten".

This is a very effective strategy because there's nothing more important to these companies than a squeaky clean brand image. And what they perceive as damaging to their brand image is entirely subjective and just depends on whether an activist group can spin it in a way that looks bad for them.

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fenomas 2 days ago | parent [-]

Also, it's worth reading the wiki page on the group behind this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist#Collecti...

To me it doesn't look like this group is so powerful that they forced the payment processors to do stuff. It looks more like, this group campaigns tirelessly, year in, year out, against all kinds of miscellaneous stuff they dislike, and every so often they get a W somewhere because they're more persistent than groups pushing in the other direction.

	▲	pixl97 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The defender needs to win every battle, the attacker only needs to win one.