The difference is that power companies aren't liable when their services are used to distribute child porn. This is the problem with cancel culture. Without any external pressure, there is no reason for Visa and Mastercard to care about regulating porn at all because that's creating an unnecessary cost center for the sole purpose of rejecting revenue sources. In these sort of cases, a group of busybodies, which can be anyone from politicians to keyboard warriors, want to cancel something, but are too uncreative and lazy create a set of standards and moderate the content themselves. Instead, they choose to pressure those in their reach to act, which in this case is Visa and Mastercard. This way, Visa and Mastercard receive all the backlash to the rules instead of themselves. Don't blame the companies for responding to market incentives. Blame the people who are creating them. This applies basically for all forms of internet censorship (e.g. Youtube).
If “cancel culture” is even one-tenth as effective at influencing the credit card duopoly’s polices as you think, how is it that Donald Trump is still accepting credit card donations?
I'm referring to cancel culture as a tool, not an ideology.
Visa actually did temporary halt political donations, so they were definitely entertaining the idea. However, they aren't really threatened by activists because nobody is going to stop using their credit card because Visa processes donations to Trump. Internet companies are much more vulnerable to activists, who can bring enough bad negative attention to dissuade companies from advertising on a platform.
In Visa and MasterCard's case, it's likely regulators or politicians pressuring them.
