One of the reasons that credit card companies have an incentive to keep this stuff off people's statements is that they sell your credit card histories on the data market, and would not want you to have a strong reason to want to stop them.
Right-wing groups like Exodus Cry and Morality in Media (the groups behind the shutdown of Xtube, and the all-but-shutdown of Pornhub[0], as well as the short-lived ban of pornography on OnlyFans) are definitely the driving force behind these bans, but fundamentally the card networks are ambivalent at best when it comes to anything that could be remotely considered pornographic.
[0] Pornhub still operates, but they removed all "non-verified" content, so it mostly serves as an marketing outlet for studios and OnlyFans creators, and all of the older content that was never verified was removed entirely.
"Allegedly" is a very operative word there. Pornhub was actually extremely aggressive about removing CSAM and nonconsensual content, to the point where Facebook was actually a far larger problem for those actually concerned with stopping CSAM[0], with three orders of magnitude more instances on Facebook than all Mindgeek websites (including Pornhub) combined.
However, groups like the ones I mentioned only targeted Pornhub, because they don't actually care about CSAM. Their goal is to eliminate pornography and all "immoral" content, where "immoral" is defined according to an explicitly religious, right-wing interpretation of the term. That's not a secret; that's how they advertise themselves, and that includes the group in question here, Collective Shout[1], although the latter is now trying to hide that tie via futher censorship[2].
Because going after Facebook doesn't fit into an agenda of banning pornography, you'll never hear them mention one word about CSAM or other horrendous abuse that happens on Facebook and is facilitated by the platform.
> Furthermore, material considered a brand risk is also not allowed but payment processors a step down are the ones who make the guidelines on what that means in practice.
That's not quite true. Processors can set their own restrictions, but so can Visa/Mastercard/etc, and they absolutely do police perceived brand risk, which includes not just pornography, but also completely nonsexual content as well.,
[0] https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-a-hotbed-of-child-sex...
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/After-payment-processors-promp...
[2] https://bsky.app/profile/acvalens.net/post/3lufjdqmhxs2v
You're not wrong but that's only part of the story. What you're describing happens, which leads to overly-conservative interpretations of the unwritten policies. But the card brands do also have explicit rules that they expect downstream players to adhere to.
Confusingly - and this is where your impression (which is common) likely comes from - the card brands themselves provide different rules to different downstream providers, so it's not like there's one single, consistent list of rules for Visa globally (for example). It's not law and they are not bound by precedent or even an expectation of consistency.
just kidding. this is the first i've heard of that, though.
i don't think it totally makes sense. your card transaction will still say "STEAMGAMES.COM 7264823" or similar, regardless of the content purchased. on top of that, all sorts of shady porn & dating websites that you would NOT want leaked use the credit card companies.
Every time you buy an over the counter medication at the pharmacy with a credit card, the data brokers know by combining information sources, and sell it to insurance companies.
That data is then sold back to the data brokers.
Straight up spyware developers embed in games.
Several competitors exist too.
And... are you really being served internet ads for candy?