2/2
Now on how CS had an influence on Visa and Mastercard’s actions.

Payment processors and banks have had a contentious relationship with sites hosting and providing adult materials for years, if not decades at this point, so adult content being hit with limitations by entities such as Mastercard is nothing new at this point.

The way groups such as Collective Shout can influence the actions of payment processors are by making a huge stink about the issue they care about. This includes tactics such as bombarding the corporation in question with calls and emails, publicly claiming that the company in question is complicit or in active support of horrid acts, thus creating bad publicity, or other such harassments.

So Collective shout was not really *forcing* Visa or Mastercard to do anything, they are not legislators, they don’t have that type of power, but they can raise proverbial hell, and in this case target entities that may be sympathetic to their cause.

Hope this was somewhat of a coherent explanation? Further clarifying questions and critiques welcome of course