16 No. 15-3047 strong suggestion that the companies could not simply ignore Dart. Yet having thus shown that Sheriff Dart had indeed used his office as sheriff to intimidate the credit card companies, Judge Tharp said that “a threat alone is not a prior restraint. ... [T]he threat must produce some ‘consequence.’ … And while the Court [that is, Judge Tharp] does not quarrel with the premise that the letter precipitated the companies’ actions … it is far from clear that any threat the letter may have contained caused the companies’ action” (emphases in original). Maybe, the judge suggested, the letter and other threatening actions taken by Sheriff Dart and his underlings merely reminded the credit card companies that they “simply did not want to do business with a website where advertisers peddle flesh.” And therefore, the judge concluded, Backpage has a “small likelihood of success on the merits” of its suit against the sheriff. Had the companies not known that “advertisers peddle flesh” on Backpage, the judge’s point would have been well taken. But of course they knew about the nature of the advertising on Backpage—everyone does—without having to be told by Sheriff Dart. He didn’t educate them about the nature and possible consequences of advertising for sex; he told them to desist or else. If Judge Tharp had been correct in crediting the companies with “ceas[ing] doing business with Backpage.com because they did not want their products to be associated with the content posted there,” they would have ceased doing business with it years before. Backpage’s content was not a discovery of Sheriff Dart’s. If as the judge said the credit card companies cut off Backpage “for independent business reasons,” why hadn’t they done that years