I have to ask would your company been better answered if they just went full "oh that was on orders of our pedo overlords, and your not in the buisness of exposing our pedo overlords rights?"
Funny you should ask! They wouldn't intimate whether the decision to ban KF was entirely driven internally or as the result of external legal pressure and were very shifty about it. Bear in mind these were mostly sales drones, but of course it was clear within moments of my first question about it that they knew exactly what I was talking about (I didn't actually mention KF by name at first, just that they "unilaterally banned a controversial website without notice").
They did indeed try to assure us that because our business doesn't involve end-user interactions or user-generated content of any kind, we would "probably" never run afoul of whatever vague threat (which they never defined despite my asking several times) finally motivated them to ban KF.
To be blunt, yes, I would have been far happier if they'd actually just said either "we decided KF crossed the line, and we're not going into details about it with you" or "yes, behind the scenes someone important threatened us with major consequences if we didn't, and we're not going into details about it with you." That would at least show internally-consistent behavior (either they collectively decided censorship was justified or they collectively decided they'd rather take this heat than lose the entire business). The fact that they were so uncomfortable in that meeting and simply couldn't give a straight answer tells me there was significant disagreement about the action and they (still) haven't been given coherent instructions on what to tell angry customers -- possibly because there could well still be internal strife over it.
One coworker who's used CF for years for various things didn't actually believe me at first when I relayed the details of the meeting to him until his boss (who
was present for it) said "nah, Moocow ain't lyin'."
Prince's rapid 180 after praising free speech lends credence to the idea that
something big beyond any one company's control cleared its throat to provoke this action. My colleagues have a gut feeling that some troon-sympathetic mid-level (or higher) manager at Visa/MC caught wind of this shitstorm who had enough influence convince his masters to threaten to block CF's credit card processing if they didn't take action.
Even though it's likely they could get that reversed (assuming they complied, of course), that would make international news and raise serious doubts among customers
and shareholders about CF's long-term viability. After all, if you're in a public-facing business like CF is and you can't take credit card payments, you're sunk. Nobody cares whose fault it is; they only care that your revenue has suddenly dropped to near-zero.
It's really the only realistic "major" thing any of us could think of that's big enough for CF to consider a direct existential threat worthy of immediate action. The only other things we could think of was either whatever corporate bank they use started growling or some shady government spook threatened to sic the SEC, FTC or IRS on them or something.