This might not be true though. I have heard that during the broadcast they had been supporting Hong Kong. Not saying this is the wrong thing to do though but just a fact.
From what I read the casters prompted and encouraged him to say it, hence why they were so quick to drop down out of frame. This is just what I have read, as I do not speak the language.
Seems reasonable that they don't want to allow players to push their politics using the official Blizzard streams. They are free to do so in their spare time.
What do you think Blizzard would do if some guy wore a MAGA hat in an official stream?
Into your message is built the assumption that all "politics" is the same.
That's not the case. And further, pretending that oppression and fascism and ethnic cleansing is the same as fighting against those things, because oppressing and murdering people is just another "politics" and not something special, is by itself pro-fascist and evil stance.
>Into your message is built the assumption that all "politics" is the same.
Not really: there are politics I agree with and politics I disagree with. That doesn't mean that I believe Blizzard should give a loudspeaker to those who agree with me. I think that's stupid because it could turn against me at some point. Some people seem not to think ahead.
They interview the player/person, what they stand for is their own prerogative. It isn't up to Blizzard to dictate what people should think or are allowed to say on issues such as human rights. It is their right to ban someone for what they deem 'misconduct' though, so yes they are in their rights doing what they did here.
They will also have to deal with the consequences of that decision, a lot of people are cancelling their subscriptions and deleting their blizzard accounts.
This will probably not impact them much, but hopefully there will get big enough that it does.
"Human rights" = politics. Blizzard can choose what they broadcast using their streams. I'm sure if someone decided to wear a tshirt with a fasces in it you'd agree... but since this is on the other side of the spectrum of politics, you disagree. Honestly, very short-sighted.
> Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
That's completely true, except for the fact that none of it is true.
Go to China and openly criticize the government, hand out fliers about Tienanmen square with Winnie the Pooh on it and see what happens.
God forbid you actually are a citizen of China, because as a foreigner you will be put in a detention center until deported. As a citizen you will disappear.
I think GP was responding to the way you said “codified into the constitution” as if that were the main differentiating factor (whereas it’s clearly not, because China also codified freedom of speech).
First you lie about constitution then you make even more claims. Before making more claims answer why did you lie in the first place? Is it because you have no idea what you are talking about and are just parroting what you have heard?
I've been held in a Chinese detention center for 6 days before, when was the last time you were locked away without access to due process just for expressing an opinion?
I lived in China for several years, and I will never go back. I made a choice to move there to advance my career thinking I could tolerate living in a totalitarian state, and now that I have experienced it I will forever oppose it.
Are you actually trying to claim that China is a free country with freedom of speech?
There is a big difference between saying you are a free country and actually being one. In totalitarian regimes the government is not bound to the constitution, that is why they are called totalitarian.
If you truly believe that China is free, which I doubt, I highly encourage you to educate yourself on the half century of fear and murder that they have systematically used to oppress all dissension.
It is not my responsibility to educate you, but you are arguing against history. History may be malleable in China, but outside of the Great Wall we know what they have done and it is my dream that one day China is held accountable for the atrocities it has committed in the name of "peace and prosperity".
You lied about easily verifiable fact like what is stated in constitution of a country available for everyone to read. It is telling that you are constantly dodging that issue. If you make such a lie and don't acknowledge it you have no business making even more claims until the issue is addressed.
Public mockery of China is a small but important part in fighting against what is happening. Pride is important to them, it's why they banned Winnie the Pooh just because some people said he kinda looked like the party's general secretary.
Make Azeroth Great Again [0]? You could by them at https://shop.esfand.tv/ before, but it’s currently under construction (the website’s <title></title> still has it in the name).
It’s reasonable from the perspective of maximising profit, sure. And it’s true that they’re (as far as I know) consistently applying a rule they set out a long time ago.
But that doesn’t make it the right decision, morally. Sometimes rules should be broken.
Not Blizzard, but in pro Dota, one of their champions, PPD, was wearing his MAGA hat with no repurcussions during last election cycle. Valve is also pretty bad about bootlicking Chinese authorities, so I don't think this comparison works.
South Park is spot on this season. You could say they are good with predictions, but I think they just gave different perspective to something that already has been happening
(episodes on China censorship)
I guess what I meant - I looked at these issues differently, others probably too.
Apple, Google "selling out" to be in China? Oh well - that seems reasonable since its a big market.
South Park put it into different perspective. I guess that is what art does
China has been leveraging their power "quietly" for some time now. Anything anti-China gets buried or discredited or shouted down using whataboutisms. Even here on hackernews you'll see tons of posts on negative chinese news from month old accounts fuzzing the narrative saying some variation of "it's not easy to understand if you're not chinese etc etc"
The hong kong issue is just bringing the issue into the mainstream
> Anything anti-China gets buried or discredited or shouted down using whataboutisms.
Interesting. The only time I see whataboutism and China/Russia brought up in the same HN thread is when somebody tries to defend China/Russia by pointing out similar problems in the West, and that person gets shouted down and accused of engaging in "whataboutism".
I initially read kkarakk's comment as a reverse of what I wrote, but even if we're talking the same, I personally believe that any and all accusations of whataboutism are just thought-terminating cliches and are invalid from the start.
It's not to defend China/Russia but to prove that the accuser is not interested in the problem itself but only in weaponizing the problem against those countries. Defense is not necessary or actually even possible since the claims are always made without any evidence.
Exactly. Someone responding to something shitty one person does by pointing out something someone else did is attempting to “shout down” the original comment with whataboutisms.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. I've wasted too much time on HN arguing with people who simply don't believe China isn't as bad as portrayed, and believe everything that comes up here or on other sites is nothing but anti-Chinese propaganda.
There are plenty of people who are so jaded that they're unwilling to condemn China for all the immoral things they do, much less economic or political behaviours that aren't overtly immoral, but do have clear negative impact on the Western sphere of influence and economic status.
As bad as the US is, I don't want a country run by such an authoritarian, ruthless government like the CCP to take over the position as the world's superpower.
>but do have clear negative impact on the Western sphere of influence and economic status.
And this is such a problem that you think the US should take actions to try and overthrow their government? Even considering how terribly most US regime changes damage a country, and the horrible civil wars that have accompanied the previous Chinese collapses?
>As bad as the US is, I don't want a country run by such an authoritarian, ruthless government like the CCP to take over the position as the world's superpower
I'm not thrilled at the prospect of a Chinese super power either. However, I also view the US as a rather terrible superpower, and unlike in China I have some amount of agency to change that.
Sure it depends on what manner, but what is wrong with a regime change? I am sure there are plenty of Falun Gong, Muslims and Christians who would not mind a freer government. I think only US business would mind because they would not have such easy access to cheap labor and electrical and human parts.
Yes I agree. Revolution is not the way. That's how China for into the current mess. But I see no problem with assisting with regime change from within.
So you want to replace Xi with some other member of the Politburo? Pulling that off seems unlikely to help much, and failure would strengthen his position.
I don't know any other internal regime change that isn't a revolution.
I think the biggest is from the rest of the world. We are complicit because we happily buy goods from such a horrible regime. We need an international boycott on China until they shape up.
Ideological. Communism and human rights violation are seen as acceptable due to a specific worldview. Demonstrating the error with the worldview can change people's minds and lead to internal regime change.
>. We need an international boycott on China until they shape up.
Right, so you want to economically cripple China over human rights abuses. Not only is this likely to end in war, millions would likely die from supply shortages.
>Demonstrating the error with the worldview can change people's minds and lead to internal regime change
The capitalist societies banding together to starve China out is unlikely to convert them to your side. It didn't the last time we tried.
Probably there's a bit of a continuum here between starving China and not batting an eye as they scoop the living eyes out of some poor Falun Gong after they slice him open and cut out all his organs.
Ah, yes. We should continue the status quo, where China continues to perpetuate human rights abuses, as well as utilizing their economic power to influence and control international companies.
For many people worldwide, the difference is that China is not bombing them, isn't overthrowing their governments and creating & fueling a civil war in their country.
I'm quite certain that China will do those things if they ever become the world's single global super power, but so far they haven't. Not because they wouldn't for moral reasons, but for lack of opportunity. Still, in practice, the worst China is doing to other countries somewhere across the world is blocking some website or creating tariffs, not level a city.
Is that true? Seems they are doing a lot in Africa. And even if it were, it's hard to believe they'll treat foreigners any better than their own people.
They are buying Africa via development aid, that's quite different from bombing Africa. The Chinese will certainly leverage their power, but they tend to do it in more subtle ways, at least where their power isn't overwhelming. Their posturing in the South China Sea certainly looks different from their behavior in Africa or South America. But as I mentioned, I don't believe that it's because they care about human rights, the sovereignty of countries etc, it's that they can't get away with openly bombing random countries on the other side of the globe yet. The US -for the most part- can, so they don't care for subtlety and just do.
American imperialism has never been about traditional colonialism, so I'm not sure what you mean.
As you asked originally, I find neither the US nor China to be moral, but I can't understand the outrage over China's acts while ignoring and trying to justify US acts.
> And this is such a problem that you think the US should take actions to try and overthrow their government?
I didn't say that. Judging by the successes of forced regime changes in recent history, I'd say there's little actual practical value in doing so. I'm a pragmatist as much as I am an idealist. There are other options to counterbalance China's growing influence and power. The TPP was the most obvious option, but the US scuttled it and abandoned all the Asian countries who were relying on them to protect them from encroaching Chinese pressure.
> I'm not thrilled at the prospect of a Chinese super power either. However, I also view the US as a rather terrible superpower, and unlike in China I have some amount of agency to change that.
Believe me. I'd like nothing more than for the US to gain even a tiny fraction of the moral values and character that they traditionally pretended to have. Still, I prefer a world order where the US is in charge. As abhorrent as they may be, they're the lesser evil here. Unfortunately, Trump and the Republican party are eroding what little faith (and it's miniscule at this point) I have in the US ... if there were any other, better option, I'd be really fucking happy.
South Park were the sellouts that paved the way for all of this.... but around 8 years ago they decided that money was more important than their principles... And here we are.
> money was more important than their principles
BTW that's really been the core principle. The US citizens lost their game of chicken with the govt.
That user has no other comments. Their punctuation and wording is odd. Their post contains no substantive info. This whole thread is full of weird whataboutisms. Chinese paid troll army puts Russia's to shame.
This is shaping to be fun tactic in the culture war. To force corporations that want to be seen as woke in the west to bow to China which will hurt their image at home.
If someone manages to do it with Nike it will be fun to watch.
You don't get it. It is not woke. That is the fun part. To make them dance morally in the chase of profit. To put them in between the blue checkmarks and the china government and to end pissing off both sides.
Oh, okay. It seems to me like being critical of the Chinese government is popular with both sides of the American political spectrum. Maybe even more so with conservatives!
Yeah, but claiming moral high ground for boycotting Georgia over transgender bathrooms is hard while simultaneously doing business with China with the Uygur and Hong Kong situations.
Agreed! But (in the example of the Georgia boycott) who exactly is going to use the tactic you mentioned of forcing a company to bow to China? In concrete terms, how do you see that playing out?
Not OP. But actors and companies calling for boycott of Georgia for unjust abortion laws are not voicing similar boycotts of China over HK, uyghurs, etc. I try to avoid whataboutism, but it’s hard not to notice how boycotting Georgia has a pretty negligible impact to bottom lines, but boycotting China (or even saying things like “freedom for HK”) results in being cut out of China for films.
I think the reason we don’t see lots of actors talking about HK is that it could mean that if they are in a future film it will be harder to market in China. Producers know this. Actors know producers know this.
I think the part that confused me was the idea of one side in the culture war forcing companies to bow to China, as a tactical manoeuvre. I just can’t see the “unwoke” segments siding with China.
After reading further reply, I understand the idea as this: the "unwoke" side of the culture war sees a company proclaiming to be woke, and to expose them as hypocrites they do something that forces the company to either defy China or to reveal that their woke marketing is full of crap.
Not sure why this is downvoted. I think it's great and we may see users deliberately do such things to get companies to ban them, which leads to bigger publicity and awareness at little expense.
In this case, the player sacrificed the prize money and some e-status, but for the publicity it got, it was probably worth it.
Made me laugh when Apple made a big stink about privacy BUT "chose" to headquarter their messaging servers in China under "Chinese oversight" basically compromising every iMessage user in China.This is of course labelled as "compliance"
Privacy and Encryption don't mean much when the government literally controls the servers
They pulled the 2017 All-Star game from Charlotte over transgender bathroom laws, but bent over for China when a prominent manager spoke out in support of Hong Kong. Utterly spineless.
What is happening there is literally what has led to revolutions in several western countries over the last couple centuries.
The Chinese are correct to be afraid, they have spent the last half century cleansing the concept of freedom from their society and they are terrified of what comes next.
People are going to start dying publicly in HK very soon, and the rest of the world will have to decide which side of history they want to stand on.
The American's needed allies to succeed in their revolution against a much more powerful nation, HK will need allies too.
Considering how Trump bowed down before Turkey about the christian Kurd fighters issue(basically abandoning people who were promised aid in exchange for dismantling their border security), I don't think he's going to care about Hong Kong too much
I can't stand the guy either, but his ability to mobilize his base can't be understated.
If it can someone be framed as a choice between the freedoms that Americans have died for and bending over to a totalitarian state I think it would be possible to sway conservatives into opposing these policies.
Do you want to help the people in Hong Kong or just start a war though?
Having China and the US grandstanding will make it a wedge issue and decrease the chances of compromise and a peaceful solution. At some point the parts need to sit down at the table and find a solution they can all present as a win.
Exactly, I work on at a popular tourist destination for a lot of Chinese and HK residents.
I have had conversations about this over drinks with quite a few of them and the general consensus is that people will die, and all of them hope to be as far away from it as possible when it happens.
Blizzard is 100% fine with their games having a political message when they think it gives them free brownie points (announcing various characters as being explicitly gay), but are complete total cowards when it might cost them something.
No, being gay itself is not a political decision, but making a big deal about how progressive you are as a company because your game has gay characters is very much a political statement.
I am completely unaware of blizzard tooting their own horn for being progressive about having a gay character.
Undoubtedly they’ve used gay and lesbian characters in marketing, but marketing towards gay and lesbian people is, again, not a political statement in and of itself.
Think of them as widget-collecting aliens who understand nothing about humans but are told that by putting a rainbow on a trinket they can collect more widgets.
There is nothing political about it, it’s just a function of maximised self interest.
Huh. You have a very different definition of politics than I do. I'd even say that insincerely aligning yourself with a political group is even more of a "doing politics" move than sincerely doing so.
The whole point is that it is considered as political in quite a few countries. (and even where it isn't, it is considered as such by quite some people)
(yes, this might change in the future, but we're talking about today)
The only problem is China is too big to care. Streisand effect only affects those people where a spotlight from a small percent of the internet heavily affects them
Yeah. China won't ultimately care whatever we do, but Blizzard can me made to feel it. Their own annual gaming convention is coming up in less than a month, and hopefully this will backfire on them badly.
I was also mostly referring to potential bad effect on Blizzard.
However, I would find it funny if the whole episode made some of your "average" Blizzard-gamer care about China and HK.
(Emphasis on the "average" here: I obviously have no data, but I suspect that the average Blizzard-game player is a young teenage boy who's spending too much time playing with friends to be passionate about international Asian politics. Again, using an hyperbole here. I know you exist, DoTA-geopolitics-nerds.)
I assume Blizzard were under pressure from China, as why else would they do this. So if this assumption is true they were cornered in they had to 'offend' someone and felt China has a longer memory than the rest of their market + China would likely ban their games whereas how many ROW people will do this?
From a pure business decision it seems to make sense as the lesser of 2 evils.
People should start boycotting western companies that perform this kind of humiliating bowing to China, Saudi Arabia, etc. Yet of course, most companies are doing that...
They don’t have to. There are companies that pursue positive impact, though few large or public ones at this time. Patagonia is a great example of a semi-large one.
I expect companies to do what’s morally right not merely maximize profits while doing anything that is legally acceptable. I expect leaders of companies to do what’s morally right while explaining to shareholders that if they disagree they can sell their shares or replace them. I have zero respect for a manager at Blizzard or the NBA who decides to try to pull what they did this week.
It is part of our moral duty to punish a company for ignoring public good rather than excuse it as what a company must do. That's because if a company is punished financially (say by boycott) for making immoral decisions then they must follow a more moral course to maximize their profit.
Personally I don't think this is enough especially as companies become more pervasive and the confusion of subsidiaries which make it next to impossible to boycott the largest offenders, but that is fixed in the political sphere rather than the economic one.
I'd even expect the 'correct' long term 'required' choice for blizzard is to ignore any blow back and focus on the Chinese market. Still in this case shareholder focus being all about current quarter profits might help as company leadership might be more focused on keeping the shareholders happy than serving long term profit.
I agree. My point is that holding companies liable to an ever-shifting window of public opinion about their actions is not as long-term a solution as addressing the parts of the system that encourage or require their behavior.
Can we please start a cultural movement that forces large corporations to choose between appeasing Chinese censors and looking like fools to the rest of the west or getting banned in China.
> Can we please start a cultural movement that forces large corporations to choose between appeasing Chinese censors and looking like fools to the rest of the west or getting banned in China.
Corporations love sitting the moral grey area on issues like this, but putting them in a position of having to choose between looking like Chinese stooges or getting banned from China will break their minds.
I don't think it will, really, because as a Chinese stooge with access to Chinese market, you have ample money to spend on PR & marketing that makes you not look like a Chinese stooge.
USA population is close to 330m. I was reading that NBA has 500m "followers" (I will translate it to consumers). Assuming that only half the US population follows (consumes, pays) for NBA related products, then Chinese market is every NBA official's wet dream. Unless this becomes a binary choice (dictatorship Vs freedom) all the money making sharks (FIFA, NBA, etc) will pretend that they "were not aware of such events taking place in China/do not comment on internal affairs of other sovereign nations" as long as the money rolls in.
I was glad to see earlier on CNN a 'super' writing "NBA Commissioner: we are no apologizing..."
But the first 24h the reactions went from not existing to laughable. Good to see that freedom is more important than revenue.
>Assuming that only half the US population follows (consumes, pays) for NBA related products
I would say at most, 10% of the US consumes/pays for NBA related products. NBA finals are estimated to have 15M viewers last year, so even doubling that you're only getting to 10%.
Yes, if laws were optional then they would cease to be laws. Laws subordinate individual freedom and every state has laws.
Also the state itself determines what the constitution is and even how it's interpreted or overriden. So saying state is accountable to constitution (which is determined by state ) is circular reasoning.
There's a distinction here, or we wouldn't bother to have the word. People find it useful. You're in the minority if you don't, which is fine, but you're wrong about common use of the word, as recorded in a typical dictionary.
> Also the state itself determines what the constitution is and even how it's interpreted or overriden. So saying state is accountable to constitution (which is determined by state ) is circular reasoning.
Well, sort of. Human systems are messy and insisting that any term applied to them be absolutely true or else invalid won't get you far. That some governments would have more success and ease modifying the terms of their own constitution wildly counter to the will or interests of those they rule than others can easily be seen as true, I think, and is related to the set of norms and ideals held by those who believe they ought justly and actually to have a say in how the government runs, and to who sees themselves as being legitimately entitled to same, for that matter (i.e. do most expect that, or only some minority), and furthermore both of those are influenced by the constitution, laws, and actual historical practices of the state they're operating under.
Technically possible matters less than what is practical and likely when it comes to classifying human systems, as they're hard to pick apart and take one element at a time what with all the feedback and mutual influence involved.
The constitution is not determined by the state, it is ratified by a democratic vote. Sometimes this vote is conducted by representatives, and sometimes by popular vote.
I feel like you are missing a vital part of your understanding on how liberal democracies were founded and how the balance of power is distributed between the people and institutions that govern them.
Good to know. Now the question is, can the newest AEGIS deal with China's newest hypersonic ICBMs. It's a question I very much don't want to see answered through actual test.
As noted in that article, the system is ineffective (officially, at least) against ICBMs. It only works against ballistic missiles that don't leave the atmosphere.
They aren’t saying we should start a war. They are saying we’ve gone to war to defend those principles but now we put up much less resistance, such as denouncements, sanctions, etc., lots of things short of war that we’ve done with the USSR and Russia.
I read them as implying it, though even if they aren't, in previous HK threads I've seen comments that were, as if open war between two ICBM-equipped nations was something that wouldn't have disastrous consequences for every single one of us.
I also would love to know which wars we (the US, or the Western world) have gone to over those principles (versus e.g. "over oil"), because I can't think of any.
For very different reasons. Venezuela is "communists in our backyard" and Russia isn't about human rights, but about global hegemony, human rights is just the big argument.
If there was an actual point in "it's about human rights", the US would come down on Turkey like an anvil on a cartoon character in old animated movies. Instead, the US appears to support Turkey's new expansive invasion of Syria that goes hand in hand with their genocidal desires to annihilate the Kurds. It's never about human rights on the international stage, it's about power.
Its true human rights is rarely the true or stated reason, and it needn’t be here either.
It could be about hegemony and influence. the NBA and Hollywood having to cater and cave in to official Chinese positions. I think it’d be different than say hoi polloi (public opinion) in China dictating what Hollywood does. One is freedom of speech and opinion the other is government coercion and control.
Venezuela is also in top 10 of net oil exporters, which I do believe is the reason other nations in general, and US in particular, care about it at all.
Chinese propaganda is well-spread. I had a Chinese roommate, well educated to boot - PhD in Econ from Columbia, and I could feel the reverence he had for Mao even though his ancestors were landlords.
I've traveled throughout eastern China and I've encountered this indoctrination many times when talking to otherwise reasonable people.
But despite the widespread nationalist zealotry, most ordinary folk still seem to enjoy bootlegging Western media choc full of Western morality. They're not trying to ban it.
Though of course China does have its very own PC police that are encouraged by the government.
Similar experience. He said Mao had to make hard choices as a leader to propel his country forward. I asked him why India didn't have to starve millions to do the same thing.
After 1949, Mao barely did anything right and I’m surprised if any Chinese born after 90s would still defend him. But I doubt India is such a great example, we probably all have seen photos of the Gange
You do realize that floating a family member's body down the Ganges is considered a sacred ritual and that what you just said has nothing to do with mass deaths due to negligence right?
Mao’s picture has been greatly undermined after 2000s as even the CCP history book said he made terrible mistakes and there were several wide spread videos criticizing Mao. His time has been long gone and only a little respect passed to the next gen mainly from grandparents.
It’ll be interesting if you could talk with him regarding his position for the government, recent issues and long term policy. My bet is he’ll be super supportive and you might be surprised that “greater good” trade off is well accepted
Lots of Americans express admiration for our founders and institutions too, though. Flags and conspicuous patriotism are everywhere in our country.
It's possible that that's just normalized for you but it seems jarring when you see someone revering a 'commie'. The programming runs deep on all sides.
Different forms and examples of government exhibit relatively different levels of authoritarianism. Communist governments are invariably more authoritarian than liberal democracies.
If that's true then your comment still doesn't make sense. As there cannot be non-authoritarian government, calling a government authoritarian makes objectively no sense and is just meant to provoke emotions obviously.
All government is authoritarian but not to an equivalent extent. From a liberal point of view the current Chinese government is relatively authoritarian, as evidenced by many things including recent examples of censorship.
Saudis barely have any influence, if anything - the opposite is true, any hint of editorial intervention by any middle eastern/african nation and the west is up in arms about journalistic integrity but chinese have been exerting their power for quite sometime.
It's interesting to watch this unfold for someone who isn't entrenched in any of these spheres.
And these are private companies bought by private investors (ok one could argue it's Chinese government money..), what does that have to do with government deficit?
You think this sort of investment is any different than investment in general? Investors will pick a bucket of investments with differing risk pools like tbills, stocks, bonds etc.
This is conquest. The chinese are gradually accumulating wealth and control in our country. Their laws prohibit foreigners from doing the same in their country.
I can have a chinese landlord gouging me for west coast rent but can never be a landlord in china.
I find it suspicious that silent conquest of this kind is not spoken about more in politics. It's a very real threat to US sovereignty, especially with superpowers like China and Israel.
You can't really exploit cheap labor and buy huge amount of cheap stuff and then expect those people to not buy anything back from you. And yeah, they'll not be buying the same kind of crap from you that they're manufacturing and selling to you. So they buy land, companies, anything comparatively valuable to them that they can afford.
You can prevent foreigners from buying/owning land/property in US, but that will just lower the value of US dollars held by foreigners significantly and your currency will crash in value.
The foreigners already hold too much US dollars. The ship has sailed. You'll pay either way for enjoying the fruits of cheap foreign labor in the past. It's either devaulation of your currency, or accepting that foreigners will get a piece of US land.
That’s a tricky one. The “woke” don’t care about all the Saudi money in Uber and WeWork despite that regimes hideous treatment of gays, women, dissidents and so on.
The solution is very simple. The government should take possession of any company that grows beyond a maximum size and distribute the shares to the public.
How do you suppose this would be implemented? These things only affect a very small niche audience. Most people don't care what is going on in HK and even less people will care about this incident.
I feel like social media is the best legal venue for it.
Start sending messages to every game dev, project manager, and director at these companies asking them why they support the totalitarian oppression of HK. Ask them what they are currently doing to limit the influence of totalitarian regimes on their corporate policy.
Make the issue personal for the companies by fomenting discontent from within.
"Make the issue personal for the companies by fomenting discontent from within."
But the only options available to the employees from that point onwards is group organization (eg. unionization) which is itself politically controversial and prone to ruining their careers (see: google employees' organizing efforts resulting in the majority of the original organizers being foistered out of google) or leaving which puts their livelihoods in jeopardy as they abandon one of the biggest employers of their industry..
If people aren't willing to stand behind their beliefs at the risk of temporary financial hardship to support people putting their lives at risk to stand against a lifetime under tyrannical rule then they do not deserve the freedoms their country affords them.
What happens if I have dependents? Should I sacrifice the wellbeing of my child with a medical condition? My spouse with their medical condition? Should I sacrifice my parents who need me to help paying for their care? What if I come from an impoverished neighbourhood and I'm putting my nephews and neices through college- should they also be sacrificed?
What happens if it's not temporary? What happens if I'm blackballed for my whole career?
Asking for sacrifice from the people who have the least amount of power as individuals, and the most to lose, when there is another option-- demand the sacrifice on the part of an unfeeling instution with no family just a C-suite and a board-- is borderline inhumane.
What about the people who enlisted in the continental armies to gain freedom from British tyranny.
They had dependents, they had parents, they had the least amount of power as individuals. Yet they were able to defeat a world super power and usher in an era of personal freedom that swept the world.
A couple of employees having a difficult conversation and maybe writing a memo that starts a conversation in a tech company is not the same sacrifice as the ones made by the people who shaped the world we live in now.
The logical argument you are making re: these employees is to say that women and men should all enlist to fight the British Army and if they don't then the British Army is right to continue committing human atrocities on them.
The continental armies were entirely composed of volunteers who believed in the cause, so yes that is the argument I am making.
If you work in a company that has a presence in China, and you believe in the concept of inalienable human rights then these are issues you raise in a constructive manner in your workplace.
If you are unwilling to take that risk due to financial repercussions then so be it, but you are a coward.
"If you are unwilling to take that risk due to financial repercussions then so be it, but you are a coward."
Financial repercussions like losing healthcare for your children or spouse, whose chronic illnesses (At least 30% of the general population) may require medication costing thousands of dollars a month? Again, should the person's families and communities be sacrificed?
Six Corporations control 90% of the media in America. They can make business decisions to censor whomever they want and they are global corporations doing lots of business in China.
> Six Corporations control 90% of the media in America
Totally incomparable.
America has the First Amendment. Its government and corporations can be held accountable in courts. Any rando has the capacity to pine off about anything on Twitter. Meanwhile China boasts a centralised bureaucracy literally censoring Winnie the Pooh images because its dictator doesn’t like his resemblance.
Yes, America has a media ownership concentration problem. No, it’s not remotely comparable to Xi’s Beijing.
As has been spammed in many threads about hate speech type censorship before, only the government is legally accountable to the First Amendment, private businesses and that corporate personhood BS can use their own freedom of speech to censor whoever they want on their platforms.
Yes because there is only one government for any given piece of land. Fortunately for you, there are many private businesses to choose from. You can even start your own if you like.
Exactly. By surrendering more and more of our society to the private sector, we're surrendering more and more to organizations in which we don't get a vote.
The main focus of a business is to turn in a profit and making decisions that doesn't align in some way with that key objective is not something they will likely engage with.
The situation in HK is bad, but at the end of the day people still want to keep their jobs, and company leaders need to try to do what is in the best interests for the company and the employees.
It wouldn't happen, but assuming if it did and you made companies pick between demonstrating integrity or looking the other way to do business with China and be publicly denounced, any half decent leader would bite the bullet and do the former, essentially every large US company.
Also keep in mind how much money from Chinese companies is integrated into the US. Things are much more complicated than you make out, I don't think it is right to draw a line in the sand and push this 'you're either with us or against us' narrative.
Things can't stay like this in China for long, the change will happen from within the country, all we can do as business partners is try to not get involved in the ensuing chaos and protect our own well being and loved ones.
It is rather optimistic to think a change would be possible to emerge on its own, given the active and increasing, almost total surveilance going on. Technology is a game changer here, freedom movements are getting harder and have to perhaps evolve their own tech...
It needs to be organized, focused, and have real consequence for the companies that choose to stay in the middle.
A couple of snarky tweets isn't going to save hong kong, and taiwan after that.
The writing is on the wall, if we don't stand against China now the rest of the world will stand idly by as they erase 200+ years of liberalism and the greatest improvement in human rights in our species history.
Is it safe to say we're in the middle of the Software Wars? The headlines have been littered with stories like this lately. From major open source contributors taking down their projects, to Apple, Adobe, and Blizzard.
It's only a matter of time until it's a critical piece of software that can cripple a nation or beleaguer it's people.
If you're looking for positives, maybe this will finally force people to rethink digital ownership.
It's serendipitous all these events are happening now for me personally. I was recently burned by a piece of very useful and well crafted software (closed source). I did a fresh install on my machine and went to find their website which to my dismay had completely disappeared! I followed whatever breadcrumbs were left and found a whole thing had happened while I wasn't paying attention where the copyright for this software was now in complete limbo and noone who had recently purchased a license could redownload it.
This is why whenever i think about buying software i check if they have a DRM-free version for Windows. 99% of the time this ensures i'll be able to use the software for years to come even if the company shuts down.
Same thing happened with Tridef. The company went under, didn't release a free version of the software, and now people who bought it legally have to resort to using a crack.
I've said it a few times, but it's worth repeating IMO: copyright is a deal, where a creator gets a time-limited monopoly in exchange for works entering the public domain.
If a company have arranged things so their work can't enter the public domain (eg DRM) then they should not get copyright protection, fundamentally it's wrong to get the benefit of copyright without giving up your work to the public domain.
This can be solved by a requirement to register an unhindered copy, whilst they're at it orphaned works should be made copyright free, IMO.
I'm glad to hear that others have the same opinion regarding software copyrights. I'd even go one step further and say that the source code must be included in that unhindered copy. Otherwise, the public's right to make derivative works from things in the public domain cannot be upheld.
The companies will say that they're still using parts of the old code in newer products covered by copyright, so this won't happen.
Besides, we'd have to have copyright periods on software of 3-5 years, 10 tops, for software copyright to even make sense. Not 70+, which is longer than any recognizable computer industry ever existed.
I am assuming that this would be part of a wider reform of copyright. For the case you mentioned, already under current copyright law, creation of a derivative work does not prevent a work from entering into the public domain (albeit after an unconscionably long period of time). To prevent such a argument being made after the fact, source code should be placed in escrow at the time of publication, with copyright protection given only after it has been verified that the provided source code can reproduce the binary being protected.
This arrangement would also protect the public good in cases where the original company has gone bankrupt, or where the source code would otherwise have been lost.
Is source code covered by copyright at all if it's never published? I thought that was the bare minimum.
If they never release the source code at all, I think we're just screwed, legally anyway. The DRM was attached to your binary or stream (or book), not the original source material. We may not like it, but I don't think it's copyright you have to worry about when it comes to closed source code.
Under current law, copyright applies to any creative work, regardless of publication status. This leads to abominations such as Disney's Vault, intentionally restricting access to a work that is part of the public consciousness.
In my ideal world, if the source code is not placed under escrow and tested to result in the distributed binary, then there would be no monopoly given to that binary. Anybody is allowed to copy it to the fullest extent that they are able to.
Because software has this weird status where you increasingly don't own a perpetual use right to the copy of the code you bought, and can have it revoked for reasons that have nothing to do with the purchase agreement. What if one day in the not too distant the electrical system on your car stopped working because an auto software update from that vendor (not the company that sold you the car perhaps) detected your name was on a DB of no-service-updates, and there was a critical big patched?
For a tangible example, imagine saying something pro-HK on an online multiplayer and losing access to your entire library of Xbox games.
From Microsoft's community guidelines:
"Under permanent suspension, the owner of the suspended profile forfeits all licenses for games and other content, Gold membership time, and Microsoft account balances."
And in 2019, saying things as asinine as "haha I banged ur mom" are enough to trigger such a suspension, despite the embracement of such an immature, tongue-in-cheek culture being tantamount to Microsoft's early success in the gaming industry.
Or see yesterday's executive order putting sanctions on subset of Venezuelan population, followed by Adobe suspending accounts of everyone in that country. Think of entire occupations affected by this. What if tomorrow the tools for your job disappeared because some people on the other side of the world have a disagreement with your government?
I wish local instances of SaaS were more common. As a consumer it doesn't fill me with glee that a company used cutting edge APIs and integrations that are hosted all over the place. It fills me with concern about their stability and I have to entirely forget about data security. Who knows where it ends up these days. Both physically and in administrative terms, on globally distributed servers and regarding which companies or countries have access to it.
This is not limited to closed software.
Remember the Chef developer who got all political and deleted his github.
This is the new norm in software it appears.
That doesn't seem like as big of a problem, because you, as the user of an open source library, can take steps to prevent such things from affecting you. Most places I've worked at have their own repos with copies of any maven/node/ruby/whatever dependencies used.
If the current administration is serious about the trade war, sanctions, etc. against China (which seems the case), I have to imagine that someone has thought about what it would take to cut off China from the rest of the Internet.
Obviously the fallout from something like this would be incredible, and I'm not advocating for it, but... do we even have the technical capability to do something like this? With the Internet being designed to be resilient, what would it actually take to do this? Can it be done by electronic means rather than by cutting cables / bombing ingress points?
They're already quite isolated by the great firewall, but it seems like cutting off everything at once could still be a powerful splash of cold water to the face. It's certainly not going to happen piecemeal when most companies are this spineless.
The US could refuse to talk to them by adjusting the routes to their IP ranges, that's about it. Everyone else that wants to talk to China could still do it, provided they make sure their routes for Chinese IPs do not go trough the US (obviously hard to do for a number of American residents, or some countries). This would still be circumventable trough a VPN that brings packet outside of the denied routing area.
I just sold a video game disc for 3x what I paid for it because the company that made it went under, so it's no longer downloadable on any streaming service (XBL, PSN, Steam, etc)...
People seem to be really surprised that capitalism doesn’t equal freedom. Time to wake up. Free world is in decline. Democracies of today are mostly facades to a more-less controlled societies. Sure, people can vote, but what happens after that? The accountability and controlling mechanisms have been in erosion for years now. Even the EU legislation, once a model of democracy, is now so far from the individual citizen that it’s often difficult to understand why Brussels is voting on certain laws.
It used to be that free press kept close tabs on those in power. Well, thanks to the Internet it got very easy to attack the press and very hard for the press to stay profitable. We are heading towards a cliff and hopefully we will create a better system after that. But man, it will hurt to fall.
It's important that we clarify what the word "Democracy" means in our language, and whether to accept or reject the fact that its current use is tragically removed from its original meaning: it used to describe a concept, it's now simply a label with no intrinsinc meaning.
If you want to unpublish a package after 72 hours have passed, contact npm Support. For more information about why we don’t allow users to unpublish packages after 72 hours, see our unpublish policy.
Not sure how npm works in detail, doesn't it pull directly from devs' repositories? In that case can't the devs just publish an update that breaks everything?
npm allows for installation of specific versions. So even if a dev publishes a new version that breaks you can select a previous version known to work. A good dev shouldn’t be updating willy-nilly to the latest version just because it’s the latest. They ought to spec a particular version and update after testing.
Morally wrong, but technically not wrong. Many a dumb law was only changed after some politician ran afoul of it.
If you're going to take "direct action" you should probably try to keep it fitting to the issue at hand. Swatting someone because they are in charge of something you don't like won't make your cause any more likeable to most observers.
Swatting someone will make them seriously consider whether or not they want to continue in that job, and will make their future replacement wonder whether or not they want to be swatted themselves.
In the end this isn't about opinions, you can very much coerce people to do what you want. Even the executives of BigCos.
Nobody should be able to sleep easy at night while running a company taking active measures to support the CCP.
Yes, because beating someone for doing or thinking something is a proven way of making them stop doing or thinking that thing.
In reality, what will happen is swatters will get caught, tried and put into prison. As they should be. What you're proposing is anathema to civilization.
Historically very few swatters have been caught and convicted. Not unsurprising given how easy it is to conceal the source of a phone call on the internet.
E: throttled and can’t reply below
I don’t think you understand how swatting works, the only way you’re too high profile is if you live in the white house.
In theory. In practice you can only act like a bully like that when you are already on the side with much more power. Repeatedly swatting (or whatever, doesn't have to be swatting) people richer and more powerful than you will just get them to use their power to make the problem go away (maybe by leaning on politicians to lean on police to not respond so over the top to unsubstantiated calls or to create harsh punishments for the callers).
In a situation like this (i.e. small minority who care vs small group with power who don't) you need to either convince the people with the power (the CEOs and execs you initially referred to) to see your point of view or convince the apathetic masses to take your side. In either case you need to be persuasive or at the very least not acting in a manner that makes you hard to sympathize with (e.g. swatting people).
Now, if you were already in power (say for example, you were the government) then you could act like a bully and kick down people's door, shoot their dogs, etc. But do that will make the targets and people like them resent you and if you do it too much or to too powerful people/groups you will either find yourself voted out or lined up and shot (depending on the power transition mechanism of the government in question).
TL;DR affecting change is much more nuanced and complicated than just being a thorn in the side of the people you don't like.
>In theory. In practice you can only act like a bully like that when you are already on the side with much more power. Repeatedly swatting (or whatever, doesn't have to be swatting) people richer and more powerful than you will just get them to use their power to make the problem go away (maybe by leaning on politicians to lean on police to not respond so over the top to unsubstantiated calls or to create harsh punishments for the callers).
They'll only be able to keep the police from responding at their home and office, anything beyond that will be difficult and require significant constant effort to arrange. And besides, it's not enough to just coordinate this with the local police, you'll also need to talk to various state agencies, sheriffs and so on.
A bomb threat will take down a plane, a single individual targeting you can permanently prevent you from flying commercial. A single individual submitting online visa applications with threats can make any kind of border crossings extraordinarily difficult too.
There's no end to the awful things a person can remotely do to you if they know who you are, being a powerful executive just leaves you much more exposed.
You're missing the bigger picture. You're debating on basically becoming a terrorist. Which in small isolated incidents might be shown to work, but then the institutional response happens. For example, look at the middle East, they can do a few attacks but when it gets too big the UN or US or whatever comes in with huge armies and destroys the country the terrorists were trying to fight for. Not good.
In this case if you try to commit domestic terrorism here, it may initially be successful, but then the institutional powers will respond by passing laws and turning the suspicion on their own citizens making life shittier for everyone here.
So for the love of God, please don't try to seat powerful people (or anyone at all).
> You're debating on basically becoming a terrorist
While on some technical level you may be correct, I think it is intellectual dishonesty to compare the targeted activism I'm suggesting to the indiscriminate violent attacks typically associated with terrorism.
I'm certainly not advocating that anyone fly a plane into a building, that doesn't help anyone.
I go to a JavaScript conference to learn about JavaScript.
I watch sports to watch sports.
I'm sick of other people thinking 'their' politics is ok to shove down my throat. They want to 'fight' for their cause, cool, but take the consequences.
The NBA for whatever reason has allowed published (aka public Twitter) political comments in the past so it's different to this case.
I think it's fair to say this isn't clear enough (it's the ToS rule they're citing):
>Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms.
For example, if similar language were on Hacker News I don't think I would think it would include offending the government of China.
What do others here think?
EDIT: someone has now quoted what was said. It was "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" I must say, it does change my opinion. If I read and understood the original text I quoted, and was agreeing to abide by it, I probably wouldn't post something so strong. I thought it was something much milder.
Or, you know, gamers need to grow some moral principles and stop giving companies like this money. I already didn't like where Blizzard was going, this seals it for me. I'm not giving them any more money.
Fortunately the games mentioned don’t require any money other than the initial upfront cost, hence the protest. Protesting could also vastly raise queue times, making the experience i enjoyable for many.
But I agree, I’ll never spend another $ on anything blizzard unless they take a different stand on the issue.
Opposing communist takeover of a free society apparently violates the following:
> Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image
That's why it's only fair we as users uphold the same rules by immediately severing any ties, present and future, with Blizzard. The rules are perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
This is just asking for a variation of Streisand effect. Now everyone will comment about Hong Kong, whether they care about it or not. And Blizzard will relent eventually, after much gnashing of teeth.
This is China’s soft power, restricting access to its economy to erode away the freedom of speech. How long before the chilling effect of criticising China start to affect those outside because the corporations depend too much on the Chinese economy for their survival?
There needs to be a law to prevent corporations from enforcing political censorship on behalf of another nation.
Then we have to boycott Hearthstone.
While the current case is neither surprising nor substantially important, it is important because of principle.
Blizzard is not responsible for what players say in interviews. In our society, it still matters that people can tolerate other opinions.
The Chinese government tries to make it a new normal that entire people can have their "feelings hurt" (what?) by mere non-insulting opinions, and it tries to make it a new normal that all actors should censor any undesirable or potentially undesirable opinion.
If that is indeed the way, then our society and the discourse therein is no longer free, and the CCP has won.
We need to keep these firms in our mind. We need to keep a list of when this happens, and we need to sanction this as best as we can. Similarly, anyone standing up to censorship should have our support.
I can be pro HK, or I can be pro China, and I can voice opinions because doing so either way is an equally valid form of free expression. But it can not be that one side gets pre-emptively censored to appease the CCP, or any actor with the power to DEFINE the bar of what is reasonable expression of opinions.
First they came for Linus. Then they came for Stallman. A week after Stack Exchange fell. And still nobody was willing to say it like it is.
Soon the endgame will appear and censorship will be applied directly to thought, as if it isn't already...
”We’re strongly dissatisfied and oppose Adam Silver’s claim to support Morey’s right to freedom of expression,” CCTV said in a statement. “We believe that any remarks that challenge national sovereignty and social stability are not within the scope of freedom of speech.”
Chinese state television clearly stating that the organization (and government that manages it) does not hold to the principles China agreed to when they voted in favor of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
- 2009 Red Dawn remake originally filmed to use China as the invaders but was edited to use North Korea afterwards [0]
- Apparently the same thing was done for the 2011 game Homefront [0]
This is a tangent, but the "Red Dawn" example is kind of amusing to me because in 2009, a China-is-the-new-Cold-War-Russia film seems patently offensive to Chinese and Chinese-Americans, even without Chinese government political pressure. That the filmmakers belatedly switched the villains to North Korea is kind of offensive to me as an Asian, since it seems to reveal a thought process of "let's just make any Asians the villains".
In 1984, Russia as the villains makes sense since we were several decades into the Cold War at that point. Putting aside the fact that they are hugely valuable trade allies, we have never been at war with China, or (at least in 2009) been involved in any kind of proxy conflict along the scale of Afghanistan and Vietnam. Making China the new Russia is as off-putting as making Mexico the villains of a "Red Dawn" remake.
If the rationale is: "Well, only China makes sense because they're the only rival superpower left". That still leaves unanswered the obvious question of: why do we need this kind of military occupation fantasy at all? Or, if realism truly is a concern, and the filmmaker's artistic passion for the military occupation genre, then why not remake it with the U.S. as the invading superpower, and the hero resistance being, well, just about any other country (doesn't even have to be Middle Eastern)?
The cynical answer to the latter question, of course, is that such a movie would be so denounced by American public figures (political and non-political) that the studio/fillmaker would be effectively blacklisted from mainstream U.S. business. Much like releasing a "China is the Bad Others!" film would be if you wanted mainstream Chinese patronage.
According to random people online that speak Mandarin, the statement the NBA released on Chinese social media was DRASTICALLY different from their English statement. Paraphrasing slightly, the English statement was along the lines of "we're sorry if he hurt your feelings". The Mandarin one was more like "we're sorry that these wrong and despicable statements were made".
There's also South Park being banned in China because of an episode that depicted the way everyone tries to please the Chinese government. Oh the irony.
> "a new normal that entire people can have their "feelings hurt" (what?) by mere non-insulting opinions, and it tries to make it a new normal that all actors should censor any undesirable or potentially undesirable opinion"
Umm... yeah... but... oh boy... okay look, I AGREE with your ultimate conclusion here. But I think you might need a new rubric which with to argue it. Because as-written, this calls to mind half of all social interaction within United States culture today.
To differentiate these things, you have to tap dance around the "non-insulting opinions" qualifier. Which is kind of a mess, because we've largely coalesced around the idea that insult should be determined by the insulted.
I do think there's a great (and obvious) point here. I'd love to see it phrased differently, because that might be helpful more broadly.
> we've largely coalesced around the idea that insult should be defined by the insulted.
I know that is not an opinion I share. I suspect it is not one many people share at all. I think it's just the one of a vocal minority on the far left.
Ideas have a place in the open. If they're going to die somewhere, it needs to be in public discourse.
> I think it's just the one of a vocal minority on the far left.
I think you might be allowing your bias to zero in on one particular group here. Outrage politics is everyone's tool these days, not just one "side" (if you insist on picking sides).
I don't consider myself to be on either side, but a counterpoint for you to consider: "if you're not with us, you're against us", or "pry my guns from my cold dead hands"..
These are examples of using ideological offence to an idea or concept as a way to shut down discourse.
> I don't consider myself to be on either side, but a counterpoint for you to consider: "if you're not with us, you're against us", or "pry my guns from my cold dead hands"
You’re mixing up two different things. There’s a difference between shutting down discourse, and expressing an unwillingness to compromise. The two examples you give are the latter. There is nothing wrong with being unwilling to compromise, and expressing that in an emotional way (e.g. the Resist movement).
Is it a bias? I definitely intended to zero in. My bubble is a bunch of podcasts and NYMag articles in which I'm told that the people wanting to shut down speech are doing so to protect ourselves from hateful speech at the expense of expression, discussion, and dissent.
If that is everyone's tool then can we agree that my calling out of one group was bad, but that the sentiment against the idea is correct?
I think you mean "side" as political party or ideology in a way that I don't hold, unless you actually mean siding with "insults should be defined by the insulted" versus "not necessarily."
Can you elaborate on your examples and how they counter something that I claimed? I read both as examples of rhetoric that are best countered by continued discourse and not the false dichotomy presented:
1) you are either permanently an opponent or will accept my idea
2) you are required to engage in violence with me to resolve our difference
I can't find the original comment so some of the context is missing (I can find my comment, though).
> Then we have to boycott Hearthstone. While the current case is neither surprising nor substantially important, it is important because of principle.
Boycott the Hearthstone pro players/streamers.
Blizzard won't notice the money from a couple hundred people going away. The streamers/pros on the other hand will most certainly notice even a couple of people going away and will leave Hearthstone to rot.
Once the pros leave Hearthstone for another game, Hearthstone will die. THAT will get Blizzard's attention.
There are non-Blizzard alternatives to most (if not all) of Blizzard's offerings. Magic: The Gathering Online instead of Hearthstone. League of Legends or other MOBAs instead of Overwatch. SW:TOR, Shroud of the Avatar, or even Destiny to scratch the MMO itch.
I agree with your position but it is at odd with the general de-platforming movement. Where banning people from platforms where they can express their opinion seems to be now an acceptable form of political discourse.
That's not what's happening. People are being de-platformed for carrying out or inciting harassment and violence. The only thing that's changed is that we've decided that it's unacceptable to hide behind passive speech when it's obvious to a reasonable observer what you mean to do. E.g., "I heard there might be a fire in this theater!", "My friend says there's a fire in this theater!", "It'd be great if someone yelled 'Fire!' in this theater," might not get you criminally prosecuted, but it's perfectly reasonable for a theater to ban you after the nth time that you've made an alarmist reference to fire on their premises.
Well, sometimes subjectivity is necessary. Our systems of justice are loaded with reasonability and community standards tests, because the ultimate arbiter of right or wrong in cases of harassment or morality often is, "Did it make someone feel bad?". I guess that sucks for the people who don't care about making others feels bad, but having to consider what your actions (speech is an action) might mean for others down the line is generally considered prudent. All that's happened now is that that notion's been given teeth.
> In our society, it still matters that people can tolerate other opinions.
Who is "our" in this? If you mean USA, then are you sure about your claim? Eg: "Guy chooses to kneel on the field because kids were getting shot, guy gets canned.". How is that significantly different than what is happening in this case?
I think it’s a bit different. In this case you’re economically punishing the responsible party - not trying to raise awareness (make a scene).
I can silently stop playing Hearthstone and the effect would be felt. I’m not wasting other people’s time or breaking a contract.
In regards to the kneeling specifically, my impression was it was free publicity to the players. Honestly, looked like they were taking advantage of the situation, a way to get free press for themselves. I know I wasn’t the only person who felt this. That’s likely part of the reason they were canned.
Ah yes, how dare those black players lift their heads up and 'make a scene'. What grifters they are, taking advantage of their blackness to promote themselves.
Honestly, you've changed my mind right here about the NFL issue by putting it into this perspective.
I always thought Kaepernick had the right to kneel, but that the NFL had the right to bench the player as well.
I thought the President, being a US citizen, also had the right to be raucous about the issue as many politicians were, as long as it didn't extend into actual executive action.
The reason people in the US might find this action offensive (the reason I do) is because it supports a communist government and I'm sick of US-based MNCs cow-tailing to China instead of taking a principled stand for Western values, but that should include the NFL supporting Kaepernick's right to free expression as well.
Perhaps the same reasoning can extend to so-called "cancel culture" of people getting fired for expressing their private opinions online.
I suspect that few people who dislike Blizzard's response like the NFL's response. They are similar cases, but the first one was punishing an American, only seen by Americans to applease an American audience. The HK issue is punishing someone, seen globally, to appease a foreign audience.
Boycotts usually don't achieve anything (historically most boycotts have had no effect whatsoever), so it's hardly going to be a good solution in the short term. Legal action (if possible, but I doubt so since a private corporation can basically do what they want according to their rules) would be better. The best would be to simply throw a continuous torrent of tweets, videos and articles to ridicule Blizzard and Hearthstone and its parent company as long as possible. Public shaming tends to bring more valid results.
You not giving them money wont hit their bottomline. However, you blaming them online and amplifying other people doing so is more likely to make them feel bad about it.
This one cuts across partisan lines- and in fact conservatives/libertarians are more likely to be affected by corporate censorship nowadays, and more than happy to push back on obvious over-reach/kowtowing like this.
i wish people would stop trotting out this cynical nonsense: it's the same tired argument that people use about why they don't vote (because "it doesn't matter").
it does matter. it might not matter very much, but it does matter. it changes the amount of money the company receives. that cannot be argued against.
more importantly, it also empowers others who may be open to the idea to do the same. it can spread the idea that "hey, yeah, i don't need to patronize this company". if enough people do this, change can be enacted. see loot boxes, or consuming less junk, or .....
if however this cynicism causes people to stay home on election day, or do nothing in their lives bc everything is inevitably status quo, or keep patronizing companies like this, then nothing will ever change.
so please keep this factual inaccuracy out of discussions like these: it's not productive and demonstrably false, and arguably harmful to contributing to "wokeness" generally.
>tries to make it a new normal that entire people can have their "feelings hurt" (what?) by mere non-insulting opinions, and it tries to make it a new normal that all actors should censor any undesirable or potentially undesirable opinion.
No, very simply they are protesting censorship, which is the opposite of what you're implying.
You are saying that boycotting is itself censorship- no, it is a tool, that can be used by many people, with many POVs, and like most tools it can be used as a weapon either in defense of liberty or against it.
The idea of "cancel culture" is generally surrounding boycotting people for opinions unrelated to what they are doing. Blizzard suspending the Hearthstone player could be considered "cancel culture," although I don't really think it fits super well, but boycotting Blizzard is protesting a specific action that happened recently, not an irrelevant opinion or statement they have apologized for. It is standing up for the ideals of free speech, not shutting them down.
Would "having links to the chinese government" make the cut for this list? because if so, you can add Tencent, and by extension Epic games, Reddit and Riot games.
Seems kind of nuts that a country with such a drastically different governance and economic model is allowed to exert (effectively direct) control over so many companies. Seems like a glaring weakness.
It seems account deletion is mysteriously unavailable at the moment for me due to 'too many attempts' and now my 2nd factor verification had been blocked :|
EDIT: nm, was on the wrong subdomain. Account removal requested & all my blizzard games gone. I hope they'll ask me why.
It happened during an event sponsored by Blizzard. Player may have their opinions but they are paid (through prizes) and broadcast by Blizzard. It means that Blizzard gets to set the rules about what can be said. And in case it wasn't obvious, it is explicitly stated in the competition rules.
There is a difference between tolerating Blitzchung's opinions and letting him hijack an interview to make a political statement that has nothing to do with Hearthstone. I mean, he appeared wearing goggles and a gas mask, and the first (an only) thing he said was "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times" in a post-game interview.
Doubt that would be justiciable in most countries, other wise you could sack a Premier league player because they supported a particular political party.
Gaming companies cant set up pro leagues and treat players as if it was still football in the 1950's
The NFL suspended Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem. That's mild compared hijacking a speech with a gasmask and calling for revolution.
Kaepernick was not suspended by the NFL at any point during the anthem protests. Neither was he fined. There is nothing in the NFL rulebook about what you should do during the anthem.
Kaepernick suspects that his activism is the reason no team has signed him since he became a free agent. And he may be right. But he was not fired, suspended, or in any way punished officially for what he did.
Fair enough. I don't really follow football. I still think that he would have been suspended if he put on a black panther beret and called for a revolution.
UK, 2018: Pep Guardiola has been fined £20,000 by the Football Association (FA) [..] after wearing a yellow ribbon supporting political prisoners in his native Catalonia.
I disagree but don't think you should be downvoted.
I wouldn't say it is explicitly stated in the rules – the rule they cite prohibits "Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image."
Which is basically a catch-all for, if we decide we don't like it, we can prohibit it.
> There is a difference between tolerating Blitzchung's opinions and letting him hijack an interview to make a political statement that has nothing to do with Hearthstone. I mean, he appeared wearing goggles and a gas mask, and the first (an only) thing he said was "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times" in a post-game interview.
Wow, that is really offensive. I can see why they would ban him for a year for saying such horrible things.
Give me a break. When companies censor speech HN likes, it's all about how we have to boycott companies to preserve our society. When it's speech HN doesn't like, it's all about how censorship is actually good and that companies are just "showing people the door" via their freedom of association.
People around here need to make up their minds. If you want to object to censorship, great. But if you do, you need to do it as a general principle, and that means tolerating speech you don't like too. You don't get to just lean on freedom of speech selectively.
The hypocrisy of supporting corporate censorship against things you like and opposing it against things you don't --- well, it's breathtaking.
> If you want to object to censorship, great. But if you do, you need to do it as a general principle
Why? I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "Blizzard, you should ban people who make racist statements from your tournaments, but you should allow people whose who voice support for pro-democracy protestors to compete. And if you decide not to do that, I won't watch your tourneys or buy your games."
Are you saying that I am a hypocrite for liking the contents of some speech but not others, and acting on that preference? Note that no one is saying the government should use its monopoly on force to ban speech - we are talking about private action.
> Are you saying that I am a hypocrite for liking the contents of some speech but not others
Not OP, but I believe they are talking about objecting to censorship ostensibly because of freedom of speech, and then not objecting to other censorship.
If you don't believe in freedom of speech then there is no issue, if you do, you can object to the content of someone's speech, but not their right to express it. That is, if you care about not being a hypocrite.
You've created a false dichotomy between an absolute right to free speech and absolute disregard for free speech.
There's a third possibility, which is to believe that freedom of speech is an important right, but not an absolute right that trumps all others.
One version of this belief says that freedom of speech is useful to society because it allows dissenting views to be resolved through debate rather than violent conflict. It would be reasonable to argue that speech that incites or promotes violent conflict doesn't qualify for protection on these grounds.
Another version of this belief says that freedom of speech is just, because society should only intrude on an individual's freedom (e.g. by preventing them from speaking) when the exercise of that freedom threatens another individual's freedom. Again, speech that incites or promotes intruding on other people's freedom, to an extent greater than the intrusion caused by preventing the speech, could reasonably be excluded from protection on these grounds.
It's obvious how either of these beliefs about free speech would be compatible with censoring speech that promotes violence or the overthrow of democracy, while at the same time being compatible with objecting to the censorship of other speech.
But here's where it gets interesting for me. From the point of view of the Chinese Communist Party, the demonstrators in Hong Kong are threatening the stability of a society that within living memory has seen periods of instability that killed millions. From their point of view, the demonstrators are acting violently and putting millions of lives at risk.
I wouldn't personally argue that speaking out in favour of the demonstrators is promoting violence. But the line is less clear than I'd like.
"the right of people to express their opinions publicly without governmental interference, subject to the laws against libel, incitement to violence or rebellion, etc."
If you believe in some kind of censorship, that's great, we probably agree on a lot. You just can't take that position and believe in freedom of speech. If you believe in freedom of speech you object to the content of speech you find objectionable, not the right to say it.
This is an extremely naive view of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is not unlimited. Your freedom of speech does not supercede my right to not have to constantly put up with your toxic bullshit on my platform.
Your freedom of speech also does not create in me an obligation to give you a megaphone. My freedom of speech, however, gives me the prerogative and the moral duty to take back my megaphone if I find you to be using it to hurt people.
> This is an extremely naive view of freedom of speech.
It's just a definition, I'm not presenting any opinions. The first definition you can find on Google says:
"the right to express any opinions without censorship or restraint."
If you are "for" any kind of censorship, even of hateful views, then you can't be also for freedom of speech, by definition.
> ..your toxic bullshit on my platform.
I hope you don't feel I've been 'toxic', I thought we were having a friendly discussion.
> Your freedom of speech also does not create in me an obligation to give you a megaphone.
I didn't say that it did. I didn't say a lot of the things you're commenting on. I just said that if you care about being consistent and not hypocritical, you can't claim to be for certain kinds of censorship and also freedom of speech.
"your" above was hypothetical. I had no intention of referring to you in particular, just "you" as the rhetorical character opposite to "me", because I think inventing whole jew characters and giving them names Alice and Bob style is odious.
I contend that the Google definition you quoted is bad, or at least incomplete. Taking away a loaned megaphone is a type of censorship. It is also a type of speech: you are "saying" that you no longer want to amplify that person's ideas. It is necessarily both.
To be a free speech absolutist is to say that the New York Times must publish every nonsense article every 8 year old sends them, because editorial curation is a kind of censorship.
> To be a free speech absolutist is to say that the New York Times must publish every nonsense article every 8 year old sends them, because editorial curation is a kind of censorship.
This is a straw man argument and not what it means at all. I feel like we've found where we diverge though. I'm using the American definition of freedom of speech, it's true that other countries may have similar rights that are defined differently and with restrictions. In my view though, the definition includes the words "all" or "any" and precludes restrictions. You either have the right and are able to express 'any' ideas or you don't have it.
> If you want to object to censorship, great. But if you do, you need to do it as a general principle, and that means tolerating speech you don't like too.
Sorry, but I don't see a world where supporting open, self-proclaimed Nazis is the same as supporting advocacy for democracy.
I can believe that we should drown out the Nazis and amplify the voice of democracy. That doesn't make me a hypocrite. That makes me someone with an ethos.
The first thing I did when hearing this news is look into how I could delete my Hearthsone account. This sets such a dangerous precedent if Blizzard gets away with no consequences.
>https://truth.bahamut.com.tw/s01/201910/acd1e702747963b5e6d6... I'm a heartstone player from Taiwan. Just here to share information from another aspect. The picture above is the comment from the official hearthstone account on China social website. (the V means verified) translation:We strongly condemn the player and the casters on what happened in the game last weekend ,and we firmly DISAPPROVE people to state their own political POV in any tournament.The player will be banned from the tournament,and the casters will never be granted the chance to cast any official tournament from now on. Besides,we will firmly PROTECT THE PRIDE OF THE COUNTRY just like what we always do.
——
Remember Blizzard is also the company that prominently feature Pride during many Overwatch events on western streams - but didn’t show the same content on Eastern streams.
I’m deleting anything I have of Blizzard-Activision not because it’ll hurt their bottom line, but so I can know I’m doing the right thing for this particular situation.
Oh please spare me the narrative that America is somehow above this.
Look up the history of government censorship of TV, court decisions that limit speech, people getting fired from AMERICAN companies in America for comments on personal social media accounts, how quickly one gets shutdown here even for suggesting that our culture is chasing ephemeral economic models to the point of destroying our environment for the benefit of billionaires and you’ll get scolded about not understanding economics and how smart people have been discussing this for years and the economics keep coming out just so that they benefit the elite. Oh yeah and non-whites in cages. Again.
The brain washing to protect American power is just as strong. The gentlemen’s agreement is wrapped in a warmer narrative.
You’re being Machiavellian and not having a raw look at the reality.
I hope that what people see is that we've been in a cultural war with China for 20+ years. Now that the Chinese market is big enough, Western companies are dropping any standards they have to keep access to the market.
Individual companies are not going to fight this war.
I don't like Trump as much as anyone, but when Trump adds some tariff on Chinese goods everyone goes batshit insane in the US. The Chinese government almost every day shuts some company or product off from access to the Chinese market for not doing something they say. But until the Hong Kong protests, it seems like no one cared. I hope now that it's LITERALLY, blantantly, and obviously about freedoms and human rights -- it's enough to get people to care. China should lose access to the WTO if it forces any company anywhere (including in China) to censor anything in order to gain or keep access to its market. End of discussion.
I have made similar set of argument, but against a religion. That an archaic religious dogma is winning over 21st century progressive principles. I got shut and banned for displaying something-phobia.
Not sure if you're talking about here or somewhere Blizzardy, but as far as here goes: you're right—religious flamewar isn't allowed, you've posted such comments before, and we ban accounts that do that. Comments like these, which users correctly flagged, would probably have gotten you banned here if we had seen them:
>Blizzard is not responsible for what players say in interviews. In our society, it still matters that people can tolerate other opinions.
I think Blizzard has a legitimate "time and place" argument here. They shouldn't regulate competitors speech across the board but I think it's reasonable to mandate that interviews associated with official events focus on Hearthstone and stay away from controversial topics.
Of course Blizzard really stepped into it by citing the "brings you into public disrepute" rule. That makes them look like their taking China's side. And this is a full on Streisand effect. The banning brought way more attention (at least in the West) than the initial interview did. Few of us would have even known it happened without hte banning.
If they had just kicked him out of the tournament, I'd definitely be on that side of things. I don't want a world where all competitions are full of people yelling about hot-button issues. But banning him for a year is so obviously disproportionate, it's hard to see how it could have happened if not for fear of China.
It more than "looks like" Blizzard is taking China's side. They have outright said that they are in their chinese language statement
> We strongly condemn the player and the casters on what happened in the game last weekend ,and we firmly DISAPPROVE people to state their own political POV in any tournament. The player will be banned from the tournament,and the casters will never be granted the chance to cast any official tournament from now on. Besides,we will firmly PROTECT THE PRIDE OF THE COUNTRY just like what we always do.
(translation taken from another comment on HN, google finds lots of sources with similar translations, including news articles from reputable papers)
1. Chinese government didn't involve this. It's pure Blizzard's behavior.
2. As you said, you can boycott Hearthstone or Blizzard as the consequence of their actions
3. Meanwhile, Chinese players can also boycott them as well as the consequence of Blizzard's ignorance
4. So at the end, it's Blizzard's decision based on their interest
Look I understand that we need to have free expression and free speech. Absolutely. But a business wants to protect itself from negative political reputation. If the gamer was talking about say LGBT rights, and his opinions were considered against the current acceptable position on the matter, and then he was banned, I am sure everyone would have applauded blizzard.
Let us not put burden of being politically correct on free market corporations.
Yeah, it's a tricky situation. This could be dismissed with the phrase "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" that gets bandied about when certain people get deplatformed.
By going after Blizzard for suspending this guy for his speech, you're saying that you care more about the targets than the action. That certain actions are ok as long as we're hurting the right people.
So that's what they actually have to defend. They can't hide behind "free speech" now that it's speech they support. They have to make the case as to why this speech should get a pass while other speech should not.
FWIW worth, I have limited knowledge of gaming communities. Most of my concern have been with behavior of twitter when it comes to policing content, specially anti-Islam content which violates blasphemy laws in certain countries like Pakistan. For long time I was of the opinion that twitter is wrong in the way it bans people or removes content which violates these laws. And that twitter should stop operating in those countries instead. Since then I have changed my views about this. I think twitter as a company has every right to operate where ever it pleases and if it means adhering to local laws, so be it.
Supporting HK protests is very different from falsely claiming that the hiring bar was lowered for women (it said this in the doc, I know enough people at Google who participate in hiring committee to know that it was a false statement).
Fair enough. I could have used a different example. Though might be worth a thought experiment might be worth considering if people would in fact confirm they treated women differently in hiring process.
> Let us not put burden of being politically correct on free market corporations.
Isn't that what blizz just did? They were worried about political correctness so they banned someone?
> his opinions were considered against the current acceptable position on the matter, and then he was banned, I am sure everyone would have applauded blizzard.
There rule specifies that offensive speech is something that is not allowed. I assumed that same rule will apply to all kinds of offensive speech, including the hong kong related comment. I, for one, dont want people to use platform likes those to spew say homophobic comments. If that means they have deal with all such comments which may be deemed offensive have to be banned, so be it.
China is very smart. They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of "hurt feelings" - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes ("hurt Chinese feelings" a.k.a. political censorship).
> China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship
No, it’s using good old greater-pile-of-money diplomacy. SJWs aren’t running around rooting for Xi. This is a company with major economic exposure to China bowing to censors’ wills.
Again, the point is we've created an easily abusable system.
The default response to any problem is now censorship and banning. We've trained corporations to take the easiest path and never stand up for speech or unpopular views being pushed on their platforms.
This idea that we can easily define was is 'not okay' to say on the internet from a rational leftist perspective and expect it all to just work out in the end is laughable and constantly being proven wrong.
These same left leaning people would never hold this sort of trust in big institutions to make these decisions in any other case. It's actually scary that so many people are so happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater to serve some political ends.
There's a very good reason ACLU defended the right for neo-Nazis to protest in the streets for decades (including their work allowing Charlottesville to happen). Precedent matter.
Blizzard et al should have taken a stand against regulating the speech of their customers private lives long ago. And I'm not talking about forum moderation in individual communities which has its own rules of civil discourse.
Being better than centralized TV networks owned by a few billion dollar companies, likewise with the newspapers, is no excuse for modern corporations actions 2019.
We have something special here where we can make a stand and protect our internet celebrities the same way we have if it wasn't on the internet. Far too many people are cynically willing to give it up either for political ends and ignore the early censorship by nation states believing both would be contained within a manageable subset and won't be both broaded used against legitimate dissents or openly abused to silence ideological opponents.
This is the natural and predictable outcome, the conditional free speech policy thing doesn't when it faces the reality on the ground.
And as I've said multiple times today this has nothing to do with how discourse is moderated on internet forums. The rules of civil discourse in individual communities is much more flexible than defining it purely on the loudest complainers political redlines.
To say that censorship at gunpoint is a bigger problem now than it's been in the past is revisionism. I can say way more things without consequence now than I could have said 100 years ago.
And no, they aren't. The two things may look superficially similar but Chinese political censorship is much, much older and the process but which it is done hasn't changed in a long time.
Free speech was once valued in USA. In that context this wouldn't have happened. Now that freedom of speech is no longer valued, this sort of thing can happen.
Now I state for the record that I know these are the censorious actions of a private firm, not those of the USA federal government. It is of course possible to value speech outside a strict 1A framework. In previous decades, many Americans did so value free speech.
No it wasn't. The same political sphere that's now complaining about how SJWs are ruining free speech had no problems black balling a large chunk of hollywood in the 50s for their private political speech.
The people who regard 1950s Hollywood as an example of malfeasance are the same people who are currently doing the exact same thing to the text industry with the polarity reversed. They have no moral standing whatsoever to complain. If this weren't my industry, the hypocrisy would be hilarious.
As long as you get people fired from their jobs for having the wrong opinions about social issues in the US, you have no right to demand that companies not censor what the Chinese censors dislike. Now do you realize the value of free speech as a general principle?
Or... there's a difference between the government enforcing deplatforming, and people voting with their wallets and companies reading the political guide winds turning.
Unless you're saying that you have an issue with free association as well.
Tencent owns 12% of Blizzard, and Tencent is an actual company, not a Chinese government department. Sure, the Chinese government might influence Tencent, but to say that Blizzard's action here is government censorship is so ridiculous that it amounts to a blatant lie.
Is your argument so weak that you have to just lie?
12% is more than enough to control a publicly traded company, because speculative shareholders don't typically vote.
The Chinese view of ownership is that the CCP ultimately owns everything. For instance there are no land deeds in China, just rental agreements from the party. Tencent, as one of the largest telecommunications companies in China is very much an adjunct of the CCP.
Don't accuse someone of lying just because you don't understand the underlying facts.
Which era are you referring to? I remember Sinead O'Connor having her career eviscerated after she protested child abuse in the Catholic Church on SNL, so it couldn't be the 1990s. I'm assuming it's not the 2000s (Dixie Chicks, among others). So the 80s? The 70s?
> Chinese political censorship is much, much older
Since 20th century, isn’t it? Or are there any historical sources confirming that political censorship across provinces of China under Qing dynasty was comparable to the one currently under CCP?
I don't think the poster was suggesting that 'cancel culture' has affected the chinese political process. I believe they were suggesting that it has created a means for their censorship to be pushed in the West. In so many words; Blizzard can say they don't want to offend the Chinese and use that as their excuse to support this kind of censorship.
The only reason Blizzard was legally able to engage in this punishment - which involved stripping the player of his winnings - was that there's a player handbook banning offensive conduct and including this as a penalty. If that provision had not existed, China and Blizzard could not have used it. And the only political faction in the west who demand such codes of conduct are the SJWs.
When tomp says that China coopted the machinery of censorship laid by SJWs for its own purposes, he's entirely correct.
No, it's the PR weasel words that have existed in sports contracts from the beginning of broadcast media
> Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image
Citation needed. I don't know the sports world, but I know in my bubble, those "weasel words" are something that only SJWs would approve of. If this sort of thing existed in sports contracts in the pre-SJW era, that is an interesting point that to my mind fractures tomp's narrative... but it seems unlikely to me and so far you've simply asserted it without evidence.
I note that the exact phrase "offends a portion or group of the public" has only ever been used in Blizzard's rules as far as I can tell (you can use a date-filtered Google search to confirm; prior to today there are only a handful of results, all Blizzard-related). So at the very least, they didn't lift it verbatim from sports contracts. If there used to be equivalent language in sports contracts a decade ago, I'd like to see it.
How do you think Kaepernick was benched and then fired, or do you think that the NFL is filled with a bunch of SJWs who also somehow think we should all stand for the flag?
1. Kaepernick wasn't fired. He simply wasn't signed by anyone team after his contract with the 49ers ended.
2. It's a matter of factual controversy whether his treatment by the NFL was affected by his advocacy at all. As far as I know, no manager has explicitly admitted to making different choices about how to deal with him based on his kneeling.
3. It was never suggested by anybody that Kaepernick's kneeling might be a breach of his contract.
4. Kaepernick was not denied his pay for matches he'd already played in as a consequence of his kneeling.
Assuming I am correct on the facts, there is, at the very least, a significant difference in degree between that case and this one. Do you claim that anything I say above is wrong?
It also seems relevant here that basically all coverage I saw of Kaepernick's case - from the nearly-exclusively right-wing commentators I follow - was harshly critical of the minority on the right who were calling for him to be punished. By contrast, I have never seen anyone on the left criticise speech codes or corporate censorship. I do not think it is reasonable to try to draw an equivalence between the right and left on these issues by comparing the positions of a minority on the right, heavily criticised by other right-wingers, with the position of an unchallenged hegemony on the left. There is a real asymmetry here, both in terms of what the majority position of each coalition is and the extent to which they actually punish the speech they disfavour in practice.
You're right, Kaepernick had an option on his contract for an additional year, but he declined that option and decided to test the free market because he wanted a guaranteed starter job and he wasn't getting that in San Francisco.
And I'd like to add that the deal with Kaepernick isn't that no team would sign him. It's not even if it was due to his political stance. Kaepernick's entire beef was whether or not the league was colluding to keep him from being signed.
To put it as simply as I can: It's ok that teams like the Patriots who don't need a quarterback didn't sign him. It's ok if a team didn't sign him because of his opinions. It's ok is no team at all wants to sign him.
What isn't ok is if hypothetically the Browns and the Bills agree that neither will sign Kaepernick. You don't even need all 32 teams in on it, 2 would have been enough.
If Kaepernick's advocacy didn't adversely affect "his treatment by the NFL" in any way "at all", then isn't it strange coincidence that the NFL went out of its way to pass a rule banning kneeling during the anthem after the controversy? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2018/05/24...
Seems strange for the NFL to risk a First Amendment controversy with that rule if the NFL were truly unperturbed by Kaepernick's advocacy.
I admit I tend to reflexively look down on comments that throw around terms like "SJW" unironically. But the rest of your comment belies some of the most profound ignorance I've seen in awhile. Did you Google "offends a portion or group of the public", and, finding no literal matches prior to GamerGate circa 2014, conclude that moral clauses did not simply exist before the "pre-SJW era"? Do you believe it was SJWs that forced the U.S. Olympic Committee to punish Tommie Smith and John Carlos for holding up their fists on the Olympic podium?
> The USOC issued an apologetic statement condemning the athletes’ “untypical exhibitionism,” which violated “the basic standards of good manners and sportsmanship, which are so highly valued in the United States.” [0]
Morals clauses for athletes have existed since for athletes at least 1922, according to Wikipedia [1].
Also, there's an argument to be had over the unbacked assertion that "SJWs" were the reason behind the "offends a portion or group of the public", as opposed to, the actual thing that that clause is now being used to punish. You know what else happened around the same time as the "SJW era"? China becoming a world-dominant economic and political force.
I honestly struggle to conceive of the educational history needed to conflate the long history of censorship with "SJWs". Some of the greatest works of western literature in the twentieth century directly address the concept, and the majority of texts that influence "SJWs" were incredibly subversive and likely to be banned at their time of release due to their attack on conventional power structures that had the ability to censor them (Black people voting! Women voting! Anti-religious scientific heresy! Human rights!).
This strategy of demanding proof for something that is easily discoverable through any simple google search ("history of censorship") is such an exhausting argumentative tactic.
There is no "liberal censorship", unless you can point me to an instance where a bunch of liberals imprisoned someone for offending them.
When people complain about liberal censorship, they're really complaining that other people have the right to respond negatively to what you say. Cancel culture is also not censorship, and it would be childish to conflate those two things.
'Cancel culture' may not be censorship in its technical definition, but isn't that effectively what it's achieving? A comedian, for example, tweets some half-baked remark that some (loud minority) find offensive. Of course, they do respond to this negatively but the media also runs with it and this group of loud people call for the cancellation of shows, appearances, and sometimes even call for the firing of the person.
You are correct in that this person, even after all of this, has outlets and ways to practice their freedom of speech - but it's essentially sending other people a not-so-subtle sign that there are certain things they simply shouldn't say, lest they would like a twitter mob aimed at them.
Occasionally, older public remarks are even dug up by journalists and used to smear the character of those people who made the remarks today. There needs to be some form of restitution, but one currently does not seem to be well defined.
I agree with a lot of what you say here, and I also think people should be more resilient to offensive remarks by others. I'm only saying that calling it censorship is alarmist and untrue.
Moreover, my above comment is grayed out right now as some people downvote it. Let's all think about that irony for a moment.
Censorship is the simple act of not allowing someone to say something.
Companies censor all the time. Movie studios. Recording companies.
I've noticed this trend with people, they identify something as negative, in this case censorship, and then they try and contort definitions to excuse their involvement in it. Because that's a bad thing and they're good people and good people don't do bad things.
I'm going to come in with a hot take: censorship isn't inherently bad. It just is. Censorship can be used to focus discussion on what's important. To keep garbage out of discourse. Those are good uses of it. Yes, it can be used to simply silence dissent. That is a bad use. But just because it can be used in a bad way doesn't make it bad itself.
You do realize that censorship is only limited to governments in a legal context? People can be, and are, censored by private entities all the time.
How do you figure that cancel culture isn't defacto censorship? Deplatforming somebody because you don't agree with their viewpoints is absolutely censorship in a moral sense.
Calling people "childish" who don't agree with you is a weasel tactic. Those tactics should invalidate the whole argument, but for some reason they don't. Make the argument without the weasel tactics if you want people to listen.
You're asking me to defend me disagreeing with the original point - the burden of argument should really be on them, but anyway...
Tiananmen square is an immediate and obvious pick. People who publicly referenced the events of Tiananmen square were not allowed to interact with China on a business level. If Hearthstone had existed back then and the streamer had mentioned Tiananmen square, Blizzard would (I think) have taken exactly the same approach as they did today. There's no co-opting of Western politicking here.
> Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California.
Blizzard is heavily integrated with Tencent in China. The actions they took are to preserve that relationship. Ergo the censorship of China is what we're looking at here - without it this event would not have occurred.
They have some sort of partnership arrangement, but it really is a surprise to me to find out that a partnership like that has had the censorious effects we've seen here. It's hard to imagine that this would have played out the same way for a partnership with a firm based in e.g. Russia or UK or Brazil. [EDIT: Or even a firm from those nations that owned 5% of Blizzard.] I guess I'm saying that I didn't "see this coming". I suppose that you and thread parent did, but it still seems notable to me.
That would be utter nonsense, yes, if it was what the parent claimed. But as I understood the parent it was about enforcement of eastern censorship in the West. I found it a quite interesting observation (relatively unrelated to modern liberal views).
I see what you mean, but even then I find it to be untrue. Blizzard didn't react here because they were hurting China's feelings, but because they have a strong business relationship with the Party in China via Tencent.
Can you give an example of what you mean with "oppression of freedom of speech on account of hurt feelings"? Because I wasn't aware that such oppression were ongoing. To me it sounds like a fringe theory spread by those who oppose hate speech laws.
They (China and foreign dictators) find the openings they can in Western society and echo those narratives that are convenient for them. This is a very good analysis.
Yep. All the "it's a private company, they can ban whoever they want" arguments have perfectly primed us to the current state of affairs. Just another reminder that speech you don't like should be protected before it will inevitably result in speech you do like being suppressed.
>They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of "hurt feelings" - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes ("hurt Chinese feelings" a.k.a. political censorship).
You have this reversed. Blue checkmarks learned these tactics from the original Maosists and Stalinists.
1,201 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 535 ms ] threadWhat do you think Blizzard would do if some guy wore a MAGA hat in an official stream?
That's not the case. And further, pretending that oppression and fascism and ethnic cleansing is the same as fighting against those things, because oppressing and murdering people is just another "politics" and not something special, is by itself pro-fascist and evil stance.
Don't say things like that on HN. They don't like it...
Not really: there are politics I agree with and politics I disagree with. That doesn't mean that I believe Blizzard should give a loudspeaker to those who agree with me. I think that's stupid because it could turn against me at some point. Some people seem not to think ahead.
They will also have to deal with the consequences of that decision, a lot of people are cancelling their subscriptions and deleting their blizzard accounts.
This will probably not impact them much, but hopefully there will get big enough that it does.
Unlike China.
Go to China and openly criticize the government, hand out fliers about Tienanmen square with Winnie the Pooh on it and see what happens.
God forbid you actually are a citizen of China, because as a foreigner you will be put in a detention center until deported. As a citizen you will disappear.
I lived in China for several years, and I will never go back. I made a choice to move there to advance my career thinking I could tolerate living in a totalitarian state, and now that I have experienced it I will forever oppose it.
There is a big difference between saying you are a free country and actually being one. In totalitarian regimes the government is not bound to the constitution, that is why they are called totalitarian.
If you truly believe that China is free, which I doubt, I highly encourage you to educate yourself on the half century of fear and murder that they have systematically used to oppress all dissension.
It is not my responsibility to educate you, but you are arguing against history. History may be malleable in China, but outside of the Great Wall we know what they have done and it is my dream that one day China is held accountable for the atrocities it has committed in the name of "peace and prosperity".
Think of all the lives your organs will save!
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=494dkjXL3p4
But that doesn’t make it the right decision, morally. Sometimes rules should be broken.
Have they ever enforced this rule in the past? If not, it's difficult to speak of consistency.
If it’s only happened once and they’ve punished it once, I think that’s as consistent as possible.
Although of course there’s a lot wriggle room re definition of “offensive”, which muddies the waters.
The hong kong issue is just bringing the issue into the mainstream
Interesting. The only time I see whataboutism and China/Russia brought up in the same HN thread is when somebody tries to defend China/Russia by pointing out similar problems in the West, and that person gets shouted down and accused of engaging in "whataboutism".
There are plenty of people who are so jaded that they're unwilling to condemn China for all the immoral things they do, much less economic or political behaviours that aren't overtly immoral, but do have clear negative impact on the Western sphere of influence and economic status.
As bad as the US is, I don't want a country run by such an authoritarian, ruthless government like the CCP to take over the position as the world's superpower.
And this is such a problem that you think the US should take actions to try and overthrow their government? Even considering how terribly most US regime changes damage a country, and the horrible civil wars that have accompanied the previous Chinese collapses?
>As bad as the US is, I don't want a country run by such an authoritarian, ruthless government like the CCP to take over the position as the world's superpower
I'm not thrilled at the prospect of a Chinese super power either. However, I also view the US as a rather terrible superpower, and unlike in China I have some amount of agency to change that.
The incredibly bloody events that are likely to happen enacting a regime change that wouldn't ensure a freer government.
I don't know any other internal regime change that isn't a revolution.
Ideological. Communism and human rights violation are seen as acceptable due to a specific worldview. Demonstrating the error with the worldview can change people's minds and lead to internal regime change.
Right, so you want to economically cripple China over human rights abuses. Not only is this likely to end in war, millions would likely die from supply shortages.
>Demonstrating the error with the worldview can change people's minds and lead to internal regime change
The capitalist societies banding together to starve China out is unlikely to convert them to your side. It didn't the last time we tried.
We're enabling and funding this. We should stop.
I'm quite certain that China will do those things if they ever become the world's single global super power, but so far they haven't. Not because they wouldn't for moral reasons, but for lack of opportunity. Still, in practice, the worst China is doing to other countries somewhere across the world is blocking some website or creating tariffs, not level a city.
As you asked originally, I find neither the US nor China to be moral, but I can't understand the outrage over China's acts while ignoring and trying to justify US acts.
I didn't say that. Judging by the successes of forced regime changes in recent history, I'd say there's little actual practical value in doing so. I'm a pragmatist as much as I am an idealist. There are other options to counterbalance China's growing influence and power. The TPP was the most obvious option, but the US scuttled it and abandoned all the Asian countries who were relying on them to protect them from encroaching Chinese pressure.
> I'm not thrilled at the prospect of a Chinese super power either. However, I also view the US as a rather terrible superpower, and unlike in China I have some amount of agency to change that.
Believe me. I'd like nothing more than for the US to gain even a tiny fraction of the moral values and character that they traditionally pretended to have. Still, I prefer a world order where the US is in charge. As abhorrent as they may be, they're the lesser evil here. Unfortunately, Trump and the Republican party are eroding what little faith (and it's miniscule at this point) I have in the US ... if there were any other, better option, I'd be really fucking happy.
This would be like the USA demanding all mentions and images of Jiangshi - The hopping zombie/vampire undead where removed.
> money was more important than their principles
BTW that's really been the core principle. The US citizens lost their game of chicken with the govt.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/200_(South_Park) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Best_Friends
Here are various explanations if you want to read some:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200971
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21201077
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195089
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898
Previous comments on this at:
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
If someone manages to do it with Nike it will be fun to watch.
I think the reason we don’t see lots of actors talking about HK is that it could mean that if they are in a future film it will be harder to market in China. Producers know this. Actors know producers know this.
Hence, the woke company needs to do pretty un-woke things, and their hypocrisy is exposed.
In this case, the player sacrificed the prize money and some e-status, but for the publicity it got, it was probably worth it.
Privacy and Encryption don't mean much when the government literally controls the servers
It just happened with the NBA:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/08/asia/nba-china-houston-rocket...
They pulled the 2017 All-Star game from Charlotte over transgender bathroom laws, but bent over for China when a prominent manager spoke out in support of Hong Kong. Utterly spineless.
https://twitter.com/slasher/status/1181065339230130181
The Chinese are correct to be afraid, they have spent the last half century cleansing the concept of freedom from their society and they are terrified of what comes next.
People are going to start dying publicly in HK very soon, and the rest of the world will have to decide which side of history they want to stand on.
The American's needed allies to succeed in their revolution against a much more powerful nation, HK will need allies too.
His "trade war" already puts him in an adversarial stance towards from the perspective of his base.
If it can someone be framed as a choice between the freedoms that Americans have died for and bending over to a totalitarian state I think it would be possible to sway conservatives into opposing these policies.
Having China and the US grandstanding will make it a wedge issue and decrease the chances of compromise and a peaceful solution. At some point the parts need to sit down at the table and find a solution they can all present as a win.
They either allow people to be free, or people die fighting for their freedom. There is no other way.
While I empathize with the plight of the Kurds, they are really no worse off than they have ever been.
Live free or die. Fuck oppression.
I have had conversations about this over drinks with quite a few of them and the general consensus is that people will die, and all of them hope to be as far away from it as possible when it happens.
Maybe I should've rephrased the title of the post better to prevent it next time.
Undoubtedly they’ve used gay and lesbian characters in marketing, but marketing towards gay and lesbian people is, again, not a political statement in and of itself.
If Blizzard actually were so politically progressive, perhaps they might not be in this situation of backlash.
Think of them as widget-collecting aliens who understand nothing about humans but are told that by putting a rainbow on a trinket they can collect more widgets.
There is nothing political about it, it’s just a function of maximised self interest.
(yes, this might change in the future, but we're talking about today)
However, I would find it funny if the whole episode made some of your "average" Blizzard-gamer care about China and HK.
(Emphasis on the "average" here: I obviously have no data, but I suspect that the average Blizzard-game player is a young teenage boy who's spending too much time playing with friends to be passionate about international Asian politics. Again, using an hyperbole here. I know you exist, DoTA-geopolitics-nerds.)
From a pure business decision it seems to make sense as the lesser of 2 evils.
Personally I don't think this is enough especially as companies become more pervasive and the confusion of subsidiaries which make it next to impossible to boycott the largest offenders, but that is fixed in the political sphere rather than the economic one.
I'd even expect the 'correct' long term 'required' choice for blizzard is to ignore any blow back and focus on the Chinese market. Still in this case shareholder focus being all about current quarter profits might help as company leadership might be more focused on keeping the shareholders happy than serving long term profit.
So, the shareholders would be for practical purposes passive investors in what would become a defacto Chinese run company?
Really seems like a win win scenario.
But what about the share-holder value?
Corporations love sitting the moral grey area on issues like this, but putting them in a position of having to choose between looking like Chinese stooges or getting banned from China will break their minds.
I was glad to see earlier on CNN a 'super' writing "NBA Commissioner: we are no apologizing..."
But the first 24h the reactions went from not existing to laughable. Good to see that freedom is more important than revenue.
I would say at most, 10% of the US consumes/pays for NBA related products. NBA finals are estimated to have 15M viewers last year, so even doubling that you're only getting to 10%.
It sure doesn't seem to me that bending to the will of an authoritarian state is "sitting in the moral grey area." They've made their decision.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/authoritarian
Also the state itself determines what the constitution is and even how it's interpreted or overriden. So saying state is accountable to constitution (which is determined by state ) is circular reasoning.
> Also the state itself determines what the constitution is and even how it's interpreted or overriden. So saying state is accountable to constitution (which is determined by state ) is circular reasoning.
Well, sort of. Human systems are messy and insisting that any term applied to them be absolutely true or else invalid won't get you far. That some governments would have more success and ease modifying the terms of their own constitution wildly counter to the will or interests of those they rule than others can easily be seen as true, I think, and is related to the set of norms and ideals held by those who believe they ought justly and actually to have a say in how the government runs, and to who sees themselves as being legitimately entitled to same, for that matter (i.e. do most expect that, or only some minority), and furthermore both of those are influenced by the constitution, laws, and actual historical practices of the state they're operating under.
Technically possible matters less than what is practical and likely when it comes to classifying human systems, as they're hard to pick apart and take one element at a time what with all the feedback and mutual influence involved.
I feel like you are missing a vital part of your understanding on how liberal democracies were founded and how the balance of power is distributed between the people and institutions that govern them.
Do you have any backing for this belief or is it just a talking point you like to throw around?
Chinese Tencent owns 5 percent of Blizzard, if full owner of Riot Games, 48% of Epic Games, 11.5% of Bluehole (Fortnite and PUBG), 5% of Ubisoft. They are also investor in Discord. https://www.pcgamer.com/every-game-company-that-tencent-has-...
AMC is fully owned by Chinese. The largest movie theater chain in the United States is fully owned by Chinese.
Legendary Entertainment Group is owned by Chinese.
Forbes Media sold majority stake to Chinese company.
I'm tired of the idea that the Western and Chinese markets can both be appeased the middle of the road morality.
What is happening in HK right now is wrong, and the west has fought wars over this very issue.
Which ones?
Also, China has nukes, we probably don't want to see that war starting. I don't think there's a good military option available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defens...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-para...
I also would love to know which wars we (the US, or the Western world) have gone to over those principles (versus e.g. "over oil"), because I can't think of any.
If there was an actual point in "it's about human rights", the US would come down on Turkey like an anvil on a cartoon character in old animated movies. Instead, the US appears to support Turkey's new expansive invasion of Syria that goes hand in hand with their genocidal desires to annihilate the Kurds. It's never about human rights on the international stage, it's about power.
It could be about hegemony and influence. the NBA and Hollywood having to cater and cave in to official Chinese positions. I think it’d be different than say hoi polloi (public opinion) in China dictating what Hollywood does. One is freedom of speech and opinion the other is government coercion and control.
China and what it stands for is the antithesis of those principles.
Our unwillingness to act on what our ancestors viewed as infringements on basic human rights will be the end of the free world.
But despite the widespread nationalist zealotry, most ordinary folk still seem to enjoy bootlegging Western media choc full of Western morality. They're not trying to ban it.
Though of course China does have its very own PC police that are encouraged by the government.
Read Mao's "On Contradiction".
-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unnao_dead_bodies_row
And many sources mention they did this just because they can’t afford proper cremation.
Another funny picture is Train with many people attached outside, not sure if that’s another convention or custom :)
It’ll be interesting if you could talk with him regarding his position for the government, recent issues and long term policy. My bet is he’ll be super supportive and you might be surprised that “greater good” trade off is well accepted
It's possible that that's just normalized for you but it seems jarring when you see someone revering a 'commie'. The programming runs deep on all sides.
It's hard to imagine people stopping using Uber, Lyft, Twitter, Snapchat, Fox News just because Saudis are heavily invested.
It's interesting to watch this unfold for someone who isn't entrenched in any of these spheres.
And these are private companies bought by private investors (ok one could argue it's Chinese government money..), what does that have to do with government deficit?
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-joe-biden-empowered-c...
Not really scary. It's better for superpowers to have intertwined economies, rather than be isolated. Less incentives for conquest and war.
A few companies and minority ownership stakes does not mean any super power owns the majority of another super power. That's a wide gulf.
I can have a chinese landlord gouging me for west coast rent but can never be a landlord in china.
I don't agree with Trump on pretty much anything except for his stance on Chinese trade.
There is an imbalance that needs to be addressed that is being completely ignored by the progressive candidates.
Not saying it will make me vote for the guy in 2020, but it will be a key issue for many others.
You can prevent foreigners from buying/owning land/property in US, but that will just lower the value of US dollars held by foreigners significantly and your currency will crash in value.
The foreigners already hold too much US dollars. The ship has sailed. You'll pay either way for enjoying the fruits of cheap foreign labor in the past. It's either devaulation of your currency, or accepting that foreigners will get a piece of US land.
That’s a tricky one. The “woke” don’t care about all the Saudi money in Uber and WeWork despite that regimes hideous treatment of gays, women, dissidents and so on.
http://www.rhsansfrontieres.org/en/183-to-see/287-forced-lab...
Have uber or wework fired employees for being gay or women?
AMC was majority-owned by China’s Dalian Wanda, but they scaled back from 60% to 38% about a year ago.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amc-dalian-wanda-silver-l...
Hearthstone is massive in China. Hearthstone has far more players than all other regions combined. The chinese market is what keeps the game alive.
That is the problem here.
It needs to be clear to them that this is a binary choice, you either support totalitarianism or you are against it.
Start sending messages to every game dev, project manager, and director at these companies asking them why they support the totalitarian oppression of HK. Ask them what they are currently doing to limit the influence of totalitarian regimes on their corporate policy.
Make the issue personal for the companies by fomenting discontent from within.
But the only options available to the employees from that point onwards is group organization (eg. unionization) which is itself politically controversial and prone to ruining their careers (see: google employees' organizing efforts resulting in the majority of the original organizers being foistered out of google) or leaving which puts their livelihoods in jeopardy as they abandon one of the biggest employers of their industry..
If people aren't willing to stand behind their beliefs at the risk of temporary financial hardship to support people putting their lives at risk to stand against a lifetime under tyrannical rule then they do not deserve the freedoms their country affords them.
What happens if it's not temporary? What happens if I'm blackballed for my whole career?
Asking for sacrifice from the people who have the least amount of power as individuals, and the most to lose, when there is another option-- demand the sacrifice on the part of an unfeeling instution with no family just a C-suite and a board-- is borderline inhumane.
They had dependents, they had parents, they had the least amount of power as individuals. Yet they were able to defeat a world super power and usher in an era of personal freedom that swept the world.
A couple of employees having a difficult conversation and maybe writing a memo that starts a conversation in a tech company is not the same sacrifice as the ones made by the people who shaped the world we live in now.
If you work in a company that has a presence in China, and you believe in the concept of inalienable human rights then these are issues you raise in a constructive manner in your workplace.
If you are unwilling to take that risk due to financial repercussions then so be it, but you are a coward.
Financial repercussions like losing healthcare for your children or spouse, whose chronic illnesses (At least 30% of the general population) may require medication costing thousands of dollars a month? Again, should the person's families and communities be sacrificed?
Totally incomparable.
America has the First Amendment. Its government and corporations can be held accountable in courts. Any rando has the capacity to pine off about anything on Twitter. Meanwhile China boasts a centralised bureaucracy literally censoring Winnie the Pooh images because its dictator doesn’t like his resemblance.
Yes, America has a media ownership concentration problem. No, it’s not remotely comparable to Xi’s Beijing.
We are increasingly becoming the product that is being sold.
The situation in HK is bad, but at the end of the day people still want to keep their jobs, and company leaders need to try to do what is in the best interests for the company and the employees.
It wouldn't happen, but assuming if it did and you made companies pick between demonstrating integrity or looking the other way to do business with China and be publicly denounced, any half decent leader would bite the bullet and do the former, essentially every large US company.
Also keep in mind how much money from Chinese companies is integrated into the US. Things are much more complicated than you make out, I don't think it is right to draw a line in the sand and push this 'you're either with us or against us' narrative.
Things can't stay like this in China for long, the change will happen from within the country, all we can do as business partners is try to not get involved in the ensuing chaos and protect our own well being and loved ones.
A couple of snarky tweets isn't going to save hong kong, and taiwan after that.
The writing is on the wall, if we don't stand against China now the rest of the world will stand idly by as they erase 200+ years of liberalism and the greatest improvement in human rights in our species history.
It's only a matter of time until it's a critical piece of software that can cripple a nation or beleaguer it's people.
If you're looking for positives, maybe this will finally force people to rethink digital ownership.
This is allegedly where the software exists now.
https://audiofile.engineering/
Which contains absolutely no trace of the program Myriad Pro.
This is the discussion from kvr about it.
https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=525534
On the plus side I doubled down and learned SoX which I wrap up in some python now and it's fast, open source and others can develop on my efforts.
If a company have arranged things so their work can't enter the public domain (eg DRM) then they should not get copyright protection, fundamentally it's wrong to get the benefit of copyright without giving up your work to the public domain.
This can be solved by a requirement to register an unhindered copy, whilst they're at it orphaned works should be made copyright free, IMO.
Besides, we'd have to have copyright periods on software of 3-5 years, 10 tops, for software copyright to even make sense. Not 70+, which is longer than any recognizable computer industry ever existed.
This arrangement would also protect the public good in cases where the original company has gone bankrupt, or where the source code would otherwise have been lost.
If they never release the source code at all, I think we're just screwed, legally anyway. The DRM was attached to your binary or stream (or book), not the original source material. We may not like it, but I don't think it's copyright you have to worry about when it comes to closed source code.
In my ideal world, if the source code is not placed under escrow and tested to result in the distributed binary, then there would be no monopoly given to that binary. Anybody is allowed to copy it to the fullest extent that they are able to.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/07/china-censorship-daryl-mo...
Is software special in this case somehow?
From Microsoft's community guidelines:
"Under permanent suspension, the owner of the suspended profile forfeits all licenses for games and other content, Gold membership time, and Microsoft account balances."
And in 2019, saying things as asinine as "haha I banged ur mom" are enough to trigger such a suspension, despite the embracement of such an immature, tongue-in-cheek culture being tantamount to Microsoft's early success in the gaming industry.
My Steam games aren't much better off.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
Hopefully this pushes more people to use open source software.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/20/chef_roasted_for_ic...
Luckily it was something that could be easily remedied.
Obviously the fallout from something like this would be incredible, and I'm not advocating for it, but... do we even have the technical capability to do something like this? With the Internet being designed to be resilient, what would it actually take to do this? Can it be done by electronic means rather than by cutting cables / bombing ingress points?
They're already quite isolated by the great firewall, but it seems like cutting off everything at once could still be a powerful splash of cold water to the face. It's certainly not going to happen piecemeal when most companies are this spineless.
Legality-induced Digital Dark Ages. :-)
It used to be that free press kept close tabs on those in power. Well, thanks to the Internet it got very easy to attack the press and very hard for the press to stay profitable. We are heading towards a cliff and hopefully we will create a better system after that. But man, it will hurt to fall.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21180623
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21180714
It's important that we clarify what the word "Democracy" means in our language, and whether to accept or reject the fact that its current use is tragically removed from its original meaning: it used to describe a concept, it's now simply a label with no intrinsinc meaning.
If you want to unpublish a package after 72 hours have passed, contact npm Support. For more information about why we don’t allow users to unpublish packages after 72 hours, see our unpublish policy.
https://docs.npmjs.com/unpublishing-packages-from-the-regist...
It's all about money until your wife and kids start getting calls at night and the cops kick in your door.
There's no reason to remain civil when fighting those who'd stand against human rights.
Doxing is never the answer. The answer is: stop using products from shit companies.
Eh, I guess virtue signalling is the priority on HN and not actual change. Think of the poor executives kids! Not Falun Gong, HKers or the Uyghurs.
If you're going to take "direct action" you should probably try to keep it fitting to the issue at hand. Swatting someone because they are in charge of something you don't like won't make your cause any more likeable to most observers.
In the end this isn't about opinions, you can very much coerce people to do what you want. Even the executives of BigCos.
Nobody should be able to sleep easy at night while running a company taking active measures to support the CCP.
In reality, what will happen is swatters will get caught, tried and put into prison. As they should be. What you're proposing is anathema to civilization.
E: throttled and can’t reply below
I don’t think you understand how swatting works, the only way you’re too high profile is if you live in the white house.
It is, coercion works. There are situations where it doesn't, but this certainly isn't one of them.
In a situation like this (i.e. small minority who care vs small group with power who don't) you need to either convince the people with the power (the CEOs and execs you initially referred to) to see your point of view or convince the apathetic masses to take your side. In either case you need to be persuasive or at the very least not acting in a manner that makes you hard to sympathize with (e.g. swatting people).
Now, if you were already in power (say for example, you were the government) then you could act like a bully and kick down people's door, shoot their dogs, etc. But do that will make the targets and people like them resent you and if you do it too much or to too powerful people/groups you will either find yourself voted out or lined up and shot (depending on the power transition mechanism of the government in question).
TL;DR affecting change is much more nuanced and complicated than just being a thorn in the side of the people you don't like.
They'll only be able to keep the police from responding at their home and office, anything beyond that will be difficult and require significant constant effort to arrange. And besides, it's not enough to just coordinate this with the local police, you'll also need to talk to various state agencies, sheriffs and so on.
A bomb threat will take down a plane, a single individual targeting you can permanently prevent you from flying commercial. A single individual submitting online visa applications with threats can make any kind of border crossings extraordinarily difficult too.
There's no end to the awful things a person can remotely do to you if they know who you are, being a powerful executive just leaves you much more exposed.
In this case if you try to commit domestic terrorism here, it may initially be successful, but then the institutional powers will respond by passing laws and turning the suspicion on their own citizens making life shittier for everyone here.
So for the love of God, please don't try to seat powerful people (or anyone at all).
While on some technical level you may be correct, I think it is intellectual dishonesty to compare the targeted activism I'm suggesting to the indiscriminate violent attacks typically associated with terrorism.
I'm certainly not advocating that anyone fly a plane into a building, that doesn't help anyone.
Do this instead: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cflag.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190558 and marked it off-topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I watch sports to watch sports.
I'm sick of other people thinking 'their' politics is ok to shove down my throat. They want to 'fight' for their cause, cool, but take the consequences.
The NBA for whatever reason has allowed published (aka public Twitter) political comments in the past so it's different to this case.
>Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms.
For example, if similar language were on Hacker News I don't think I would think it would include offending the government of China.
What do others here think?
EDIT: someone has now quoted what was said. It was "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" I must say, it does change my opinion. If I read and understood the original text I quoted, and was agreeing to abide by it, I probably wouldn't post something so strong. I thought it was something much milder.
I know it’s nothing but a drop in the bucket but I will no longer support Blizzard - time to find another game.
Perhaps we should organize a day of protest across all blizzard games.
I think it’s pretty telling that I don’t feel comfortable posting this on my main account.
But I agree, I’ll never spend another $ on anything blizzard unless they take a different stand on the issue.
> Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image
Surely their own actions just offended "a portion or group of the public".
There needs to be a law to prevent corporations from enforcing political censorship on behalf of another nation.
Blizzard is not responsible for what players say in interviews. In our society, it still matters that people can tolerate other opinions.
The Chinese government tries to make it a new normal that entire people can have their "feelings hurt" (what?) by mere non-insulting opinions, and it tries to make it a new normal that all actors should censor any undesirable or potentially undesirable opinion.
If that is indeed the way, then our society and the discourse therein is no longer free, and the CCP has won.
We need to keep these firms in our mind. We need to keep a list of when this happens, and we need to sanction this as best as we can. Similarly, anyone standing up to censorship should have our support.
I can be pro HK, or I can be pro China, and I can voice opinions because doing so either way is an equally valid form of free expression. But it can not be that one side gets pre-emptively censored to appease the CCP, or any actor with the power to DEFINE the bar of what is reasonable expression of opinions.
1> New Top Gun Movie removed a patch on Tom Cruises jacketdue to Chinese funding.
2> NBA issued an apology for an owner showing Hong Kong support and China stopped NBA broadcasts.
3> Blizzard
4> Apple Hides Taiwans Flag emoji
Sounds trivial but they're the tip of the iceberg for censoring freedom of expression based on a DICTATOR's whim.
Xi "Winnie The Poop" is an autocrat and once he sealed his grip on power and lifted term limits.
The fact is, the people are fighting a restriction on their freedom, in order to benefit the powerful.
This is a tale as old as humanity itself.
This is also what I fear will happen to America if we're not careful.
I think we need to be united in standing up against restrictions on the freedom of expression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh
Chinese state television clearly stating that the organization (and government that manages it) does not hold to the principles China agreed to when they voted in favor of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/10/8/20904593/nba-china-co...
https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
[0] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-china-red-dawn-2...
In 1984, Russia as the villains makes sense since we were several decades into the Cold War at that point. Putting aside the fact that they are hugely valuable trade allies, we have never been at war with China, or (at least in 2009) been involved in any kind of proxy conflict along the scale of Afghanistan and Vietnam. Making China the new Russia is as off-putting as making Mexico the villains of a "Red Dawn" remake.
If the rationale is: "Well, only China makes sense because they're the only rival superpower left". That still leaves unanswered the obvious question of: why do we need this kind of military occupation fantasy at all? Or, if realism truly is a concern, and the filmmaker's artistic passion for the military occupation genre, then why not remake it with the U.S. as the invading superpower, and the hero resistance being, well, just about any other country (doesn't even have to be Middle Eastern)?
The cynical answer to the latter question, of course, is that such a movie would be so denounced by American public figures (political and non-political) that the studio/fillmaker would be effectively blacklisted from mainstream U.S. business. Much like releasing a "China is the Bad Others!" film would be if you wanted mainstream Chinese patronage.
The NBA has not issued an apology to China: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/10/8/20904593/nba-china-co...
Umm... yeah... but... oh boy... okay look, I AGREE with your ultimate conclusion here. But I think you might need a new rubric which with to argue it. Because as-written, this calls to mind half of all social interaction within United States culture today.
To differentiate these things, you have to tap dance around the "non-insulting opinions" qualifier. Which is kind of a mess, because we've largely coalesced around the idea that insult should be determined by the insulted.
I do think there's a great (and obvious) point here. I'd love to see it phrased differently, because that might be helpful more broadly.
I know that is not an opinion I share. I suspect it is not one many people share at all. I think it's just the one of a vocal minority on the far left.
Ideas have a place in the open. If they're going to die somewhere, it needs to be in public discourse.
I think you might be allowing your bias to zero in on one particular group here. Outrage politics is everyone's tool these days, not just one "side" (if you insist on picking sides).
I don't consider myself to be on either side, but a counterpoint for you to consider: "if you're not with us, you're against us", or "pry my guns from my cold dead hands"..
These are examples of using ideological offence to an idea or concept as a way to shut down discourse.
You’re mixing up two different things. There’s a difference between shutting down discourse, and expressing an unwillingness to compromise. The two examples you give are the latter. There is nothing wrong with being unwilling to compromise, and expressing that in an emotional way (e.g. the Resist movement).
If that is everyone's tool then can we agree that my calling out of one group was bad, but that the sentiment against the idea is correct?
I think you mean "side" as political party or ideology in a way that I don't hold, unless you actually mean siding with "insults should be defined by the insulted" versus "not necessarily."
Can you elaborate on your examples and how they counter something that I claimed? I read both as examples of rhetoric that are best countered by continued discourse and not the false dichotomy presented:
1) you are either permanently an opponent or will accept my idea 2) you are required to engage in violence with me to resolve our difference
I can't find the original comment so some of the context is missing (I can find my comment, though).
Boycott the Hearthstone pro players/streamers.
Blizzard won't notice the money from a couple hundred people going away. The streamers/pros on the other hand will most certainly notice even a couple of people going away and will leave Hearthstone to rot.
Once the pros leave Hearthstone for another game, Hearthstone will die. THAT will get Blizzard's attention.
Why would Blizzard care, if they are still making money on the other games people left Heathstone for?
Suspending a player in order to curtail their speech because of China's politically motivated demands is, itself, a political act.
This is so overloaded with subjectivity, and it's the main problem of why regulating speech remains problematic and dangerous.
I can apply this statement to anything and validate what I claim is the baseline for objectivity.
Who is "our" in this? If you mean USA, then are you sure about your claim? Eg: "Guy chooses to kneel on the field because kids were getting shot, guy gets canned.". How is that significantly different than what is happening in this case?
I can silently stop playing Hearthstone and the effect would be felt. I’m not wasting other people’s time or breaking a contract.
In regards to the kneeling specifically, my impression was it was free publicity to the players. Honestly, looked like they were taking advantage of the situation, a way to get free press for themselves. I know I wasn’t the only person who felt this. That’s likely part of the reason they were canned.
I always thought Kaepernick had the right to kneel, but that the NFL had the right to bench the player as well.
I thought the President, being a US citizen, also had the right to be raucous about the issue as many politicians were, as long as it didn't extend into actual executive action.
The reason people in the US might find this action offensive (the reason I do) is because it supports a communist government and I'm sick of US-based MNCs cow-tailing to China instead of taking a principled stand for Western values, but that should include the NFL supporting Kaepernick's right to free expression as well.
Perhaps the same reasoning can extend to so-called "cancel culture" of people getting fired for expressing their private opinions online.
it does matter. it might not matter very much, but it does matter. it changes the amount of money the company receives. that cannot be argued against.
more importantly, it also empowers others who may be open to the idea to do the same. it can spread the idea that "hey, yeah, i don't need to patronize this company". if enough people do this, change can be enacted. see loot boxes, or consuming less junk, or .....
if however this cynicism causes people to stay home on election day, or do nothing in their lives bc everything is inevitably status quo, or keep patronizing companies like this, then nothing will ever change.
so please keep this factual inaccuracy out of discussions like these: it's not productive and demonstrably false, and arguably harmful to contributing to "wokeness" generally.
>tries to make it a new normal that entire people can have their "feelings hurt" (what?) by mere non-insulting opinions, and it tries to make it a new normal that all actors should censor any undesirable or potentially undesirable opinion.
You are saying that boycotting is itself censorship- no, it is a tool, that can be used by many people, with many POVs, and like most tools it can be used as a weapon either in defense of liberty or against it.
@TrumpSC @Kripparrian @G2Thijs
None of them have spoken out. Perhaps they would if asked.
I hope they do stand up for what they see as right, though. I just understand why they might not.
https://github.com/caffeine-overload/bandinchina
Still, the national grid of my European country is controlled by a literally state-owned Chinese company, so Tencent seems tame in comparison.
[EDIT: I see, it was deliberate wordplay from South Park. Sorry!]
EDIT: nm, was on the wrong subdomain. Account removal requested & all my blizzard games gone. I hope they'll ask me why.
There is a difference between tolerating Blitzchung's opinions and letting him hijack an interview to make a political statement that has nothing to do with Hearthstone. I mean, he appeared wearing goggles and a gas mask, and the first (an only) thing he said was "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times" in a post-game interview.
Gaming companies cant set up pro leagues and treat players as if it was still football in the 1950's
Kaepernick suspects that his activism is the reason no team has signed him since he became a free agent. And he may be right. But he was not fired, suspended, or in any way punished officially for what he did.
False. He chose to use a clause in his contract that let him leave the 49ers early.
UK, 2018: Pep Guardiola has been fined £20,000 by the Football Association (FA) [..] after wearing a yellow ribbon supporting political prisoners in his native Catalonia.
https://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/news/breaking-news-guardiola-...
I wouldn't say it is explicitly stated in the rules – the rule they cite prohibits "Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image."
Which is basically a catch-all for, if we decide we don't like it, we can prohibit it.
Wow, that is really offensive. I can see why they would ban him for a year for saying such horrible things.
No, we need to boycott Blizzard.
You mean Blizzard?
People around here need to make up their minds. If you want to object to censorship, great. But if you do, you need to do it as a general principle, and that means tolerating speech you don't like too. You don't get to just lean on freedom of speech selectively.
The hypocrisy of supporting corporate censorship against things you like and opposing it against things you don't --- well, it's breathtaking.
Why? I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "Blizzard, you should ban people who make racist statements from your tournaments, but you should allow people whose who voice support for pro-democracy protestors to compete. And if you decide not to do that, I won't watch your tourneys or buy your games."
Are you saying that I am a hypocrite for liking the contents of some speech but not others, and acting on that preference? Note that no one is saying the government should use its monopoly on force to ban speech - we are talking about private action.
Not OP, but I believe they are talking about objecting to censorship ostensibly because of freedom of speech, and then not objecting to other censorship.
If you don't believe in freedom of speech then there is no issue, if you do, you can object to the content of someone's speech, but not their right to express it. That is, if you care about not being a hypocrite.
There's a third possibility, which is to believe that freedom of speech is an important right, but not an absolute right that trumps all others.
One version of this belief says that freedom of speech is useful to society because it allows dissenting views to be resolved through debate rather than violent conflict. It would be reasonable to argue that speech that incites or promotes violent conflict doesn't qualify for protection on these grounds.
Another version of this belief says that freedom of speech is just, because society should only intrude on an individual's freedom (e.g. by preventing them from speaking) when the exercise of that freedom threatens another individual's freedom. Again, speech that incites or promotes intruding on other people's freedom, to an extent greater than the intrusion caused by preventing the speech, could reasonably be excluded from protection on these grounds.
It's obvious how either of these beliefs about free speech would be compatible with censoring speech that promotes violence or the overthrow of democracy, while at the same time being compatible with objecting to the censorship of other speech.
But here's where it gets interesting for me. From the point of view of the Chinese Communist Party, the demonstrators in Hong Kong are threatening the stability of a society that within living memory has seen periods of instability that killed millions. From their point of view, the demonstrators are acting violently and putting millions of lives at risk.
I wouldn't personally argue that speaking out in favour of the demonstrators is promoting violence. But the line is less clear than I'd like.
Look up the definition of freedom of speech:
"the right to express any opinions without censorship or restraint."
"the right of people to express their opinions publicly without governmental interference, subject to the laws against libel, incitement to violence or rebellion, etc."
Censoring racists and serial harassers isn't the same as censoring pro-democracy activists.
Your freedom of speech also does not create in me an obligation to give you a megaphone. My freedom of speech, however, gives me the prerogative and the moral duty to take back my megaphone if I find you to be using it to hurt people.
It's just a definition, I'm not presenting any opinions. The first definition you can find on Google says:
"the right to express any opinions without censorship or restraint."
If you are "for" any kind of censorship, even of hateful views, then you can't be also for freedom of speech, by definition.
> ..your toxic bullshit on my platform.
I hope you don't feel I've been 'toxic', I thought we were having a friendly discussion.
> Your freedom of speech also does not create in me an obligation to give you a megaphone.
I didn't say that it did. I didn't say a lot of the things you're commenting on. I just said that if you care about being consistent and not hypocritical, you can't claim to be for certain kinds of censorship and also freedom of speech.
I contend that the Google definition you quoted is bad, or at least incomplete. Taking away a loaned megaphone is a type of censorship. It is also a type of speech: you are "saying" that you no longer want to amplify that person's ideas. It is necessarily both.
To be a free speech absolutist is to say that the New York Times must publish every nonsense article every 8 year old sends them, because editorial curation is a kind of censorship.
This is a straw man argument and not what it means at all. I feel like we've found where we diverge though. I'm using the American definition of freedom of speech, it's true that other countries may have similar rights that are defined differently and with restrictions. In my view though, the definition includes the words "all" or "any" and precludes restrictions. You either have the right and are able to express 'any' ideas or you don't have it.
Thanks for the discussion
Sorry, but I don't see a world where supporting open, self-proclaimed Nazis is the same as supporting advocacy for democracy.
I can believe that we should drown out the Nazis and amplify the voice of democracy. That doesn't make me a hypocrite. That makes me someone with an ethos.
I think people are just trying and failing to voice their actual feelings on the matter.
You could respect Blizzard's right to suspend the player for his opinion. And fully acknowledge that it is them showing him the door and all that.
You could also believe that Blizzard is on the wrong side in this conflict and withdraw your support based on that.
So you wouldn't be boycotting Blizzard for censorship so much as for supporting something you find wrong.
People complaining about "free speech" and "censorship" are complaining about the wrong thing here.
>https://truth.bahamut.com.tw/s01/201910/acd1e702747963b5e6d6... I'm a heartstone player from Taiwan. Just here to share information from another aspect. The picture above is the comment from the official hearthstone account on China social website. (the V means verified) translation:We strongly condemn the player and the casters on what happened in the game last weekend ,and we firmly DISAPPROVE people to state their own political POV in any tournament.The player will be banned from the tournament,and the casters will never be granted the chance to cast any official tournament from now on. Besides,we will firmly PROTECT THE PRIDE OF THE COUNTRY just like what we always do.
——
Remember Blizzard is also the company that prominently feature Pride during many Overwatch events on western streams - but didn’t show the same content on Eastern streams.
I’m deleting anything I have of Blizzard-Activision not because it’ll hurt their bottom line, but so I can know I’m doing the right thing for this particular situation.
Look up the history of government censorship of TV, court decisions that limit speech, people getting fired from AMERICAN companies in America for comments on personal social media accounts, how quickly one gets shutdown here even for suggesting that our culture is chasing ephemeral economic models to the point of destroying our environment for the benefit of billionaires and you’ll get scolded about not understanding economics and how smart people have been discussing this for years and the economics keep coming out just so that they benefit the elite. Oh yeah and non-whites in cages. Again.
The brain washing to protect American power is just as strong. The gentlemen’s agreement is wrapped in a warmer narrative.
You’re being Machiavellian and not having a raw look at the reality.
Blizzard/Activision is a multinational corporation. Incorporated in the US, but beholden to more cultural norms than just the US ones.
I hope that what people see is that we've been in a cultural war with China for 20+ years. Now that the Chinese market is big enough, Western companies are dropping any standards they have to keep access to the market.
Individual companies are not going to fight this war.
I don't like Trump as much as anyone, but when Trump adds some tariff on Chinese goods everyone goes batshit insane in the US. The Chinese government almost every day shuts some company or product off from access to the Chinese market for not doing something they say. But until the Hong Kong protests, it seems like no one cared. I hope now that it's LITERALLY, blantantly, and obviously about freedoms and human rights -- it's enough to get people to care. China should lose access to the WTO if it forces any company anywhere (including in China) to censor anything in order to gain or keep access to its market. End of discussion.
I would love to see a list like this.
Unfortunately, it would contain the names of virtually every airline. But I would still like to see it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20646888
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645480
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20662370
I think Blizzard has a legitimate "time and place" argument here. They shouldn't regulate competitors speech across the board but I think it's reasonable to mandate that interviews associated with official events focus on Hearthstone and stay away from controversial topics.
Of course Blizzard really stepped into it by citing the "brings you into public disrepute" rule. That makes them look like their taking China's side. And this is a full on Streisand effect. The banning brought way more attention (at least in the West) than the initial interview did. Few of us would have even known it happened without hte banning.
> We strongly condemn the player and the casters on what happened in the game last weekend ,and we firmly DISAPPROVE people to state their own political POV in any tournament. The player will be banned from the tournament,and the casters will never be granted the chance to cast any official tournament from now on. Besides,we will firmly PROTECT THE PRIDE OF THE COUNTRY just like what we always do.
(translation taken from another comment on HN, google finds lots of sources with similar translations, including news articles from reputable papers)
Blizzard pushed Pride hard when it suited them to do so. What is the proper time and place exactly?
It would seem that only certain political opinions are ok and those would be the type that won't hurt their bottom line.
I'd agree with a slap on the wrist. Like $500 fine or something. But forfeiting all winners and 12 month ban is insane.
Seems like Blizzard is pandering to China because they don't want locked out of the market.
Shame on them for enjoying democracy in their own country (US) but assisting with suppressing it in other countries for their own profit.
Look I understand that we need to have free expression and free speech. Absolutely. But a business wants to protect itself from negative political reputation. If the gamer was talking about say LGBT rights, and his opinions were considered against the current acceptable position on the matter, and then he was banned, I am sure everyone would have applauded blizzard.
Let us not put burden of being politically correct on free market corporations.
By going after Blizzard for suspending this guy for his speech, you're saying that you care more about the targets than the action. That certain actions are ok as long as we're hurting the right people.
So that's what they actually have to defend. They can't hide behind "free speech" now that it's speech they support. They have to make the case as to why this speech should get a pass while other speech should not.
Isn't that what blizz just did? They were worried about political correctness so they banned someone?
> his opinions were considered against the current acceptable position on the matter, and then he was banned, I am sure everyone would have applauded blizzard.
Why are you so sure of this?
They seem to have picked up the torch themselves on this one.
we can't continue with appeasement of a totalitarian state bent on controlling the discourse of the world if we want to claim that we are a democracy.
unless we're willing to lose money to stay true to our ideals, our ideals aren't real whatsoever.
Honestly never even heard of it so that's pretty easy then.
Literally noone could have seen this coming. /s
edit: XCabbage better explains what I was trying to say. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21191253
That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.
Of course it's not, but you're missing the point. They're simply taking advantage of this incoherence in the current western value.
What I'm saying is, China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship (edit: in the West).
No, it’s using good old greater-pile-of-money diplomacy. SJWs aren’t running around rooting for Xi. This is a company with major economic exposure to China bowing to censors’ wills.
They're saying that cancel culture has normalized private sector political censorship in the west prior to this, making it a smaller reach.
The $ considerations are certainly there in all cases.
The point was that “ China is co-opting modern liberal censorship” to advance its agenda.
That’s simply not the case. One is driven by mass outrage—bottom up. The other by central diktat—top down. They’re separate and unconnected vectors.
The default response to any problem is now censorship and banning. We've trained corporations to take the easiest path and never stand up for speech or unpopular views being pushed on their platforms.
This idea that we can easily define was is 'not okay' to say on the internet from a rational leftist perspective and expect it all to just work out in the end is laughable and constantly being proven wrong.
These same left leaning people would never hold this sort of trust in big institutions to make these decisions in any other case. It's actually scary that so many people are so happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater to serve some political ends.
There's a very good reason ACLU defended the right for neo-Nazis to protest in the streets for decades (including their work allowing Charlottesville to happen). Precedent matter.
Blizzard et al should have taken a stand against regulating the speech of their customers private lives long ago. And I'm not talking about forum moderation in individual communities which has its own rules of civil discourse.
No it isn't. That is to say, censorship and banning are less of a problem now than they've been at any other time in US history.
We have something special here where we can make a stand and protect our internet celebrities the same way we have if it wasn't on the internet. Far too many people are cynically willing to give it up either for political ends and ignore the early censorship by nation states believing both would be contained within a manageable subset and won't be both broaded used against legitimate dissents or openly abused to silence ideological opponents.
This is the natural and predictable outcome, the conditional free speech policy thing doesn't when it faces the reality on the ground.
And as I've said multiple times today this has nothing to do with how discourse is moderated on internet forums. The rules of civil discourse in individual communities is much more flexible than defining it purely on the loudest complainers political redlines.
No it isn't. This is alarmism.
Enjoy the utopia at gun point approach to a better society.
Now I state for the record that I know these are the censorious actions of a private firm, not those of the USA federal government. It is of course possible to value speech outside a strict 1A framework. In previous decades, many Americans did so value free speech.
As long as you get people fired from their jobs for having the wrong opinions about social issues in the US, you have no right to demand that companies not censor what the Chinese censors dislike. Now do you realize the value of free speech as a general principle?
Unless you're saying that you have an issue with free association as well.
Is your argument so weak that you have to just lie?
The Chinese view of ownership is that the CCP ultimately owns everything. For instance there are no land deeds in China, just rental agreements from the party. Tencent, as one of the largest telecommunications companies in China is very much an adjunct of the CCP.
Don't accuse someone of lying just because you don't understand the underlying facts.
Since 20th century, isn’t it? Or are there any historical sources confirming that political censorship across provinces of China under Qing dynasty was comparable to the one currently under CCP?
My point is that their process is not really being influenced by the so-called "cancel culture" of the last few years.
When tomp says that China coopted the machinery of censorship laid by SJWs for its own purposes, he's entirely correct.
> Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image
I note that the exact phrase "offends a portion or group of the public" has only ever been used in Blizzard's rules as far as I can tell (you can use a date-filtered Google search to confirm; prior to today there are only a handful of results, all Blizzard-related). So at the very least, they didn't lift it verbatim from sports contracts. If there used to be equivalent language in sports contracts a decade ago, I'd like to see it.
1. Kaepernick wasn't fired. He simply wasn't signed by anyone team after his contract with the 49ers ended.
2. It's a matter of factual controversy whether his treatment by the NFL was affected by his advocacy at all. As far as I know, no manager has explicitly admitted to making different choices about how to deal with him based on his kneeling.
3. It was never suggested by anybody that Kaepernick's kneeling might be a breach of his contract.
4. Kaepernick was not denied his pay for matches he'd already played in as a consequence of his kneeling.
Assuming I am correct on the facts, there is, at the very least, a significant difference in degree between that case and this one. Do you claim that anything I say above is wrong?
It also seems relevant here that basically all coverage I saw of Kaepernick's case - from the nearly-exclusively right-wing commentators I follow - was harshly critical of the minority on the right who were calling for him to be punished. By contrast, I have never seen anyone on the left criticise speech codes or corporate censorship. I do not think it is reasonable to try to draw an equivalence between the right and left on these issues by comparing the positions of a minority on the right, heavily criticised by other right-wingers, with the position of an unchallenged hegemony on the left. There is a real asymmetry here, both in terms of what the majority position of each coalition is and the extent to which they actually punish the speech they disfavour in practice.
And I'd like to add that the deal with Kaepernick isn't that no team would sign him. It's not even if it was due to his political stance. Kaepernick's entire beef was whether or not the league was colluding to keep him from being signed.
To put it as simply as I can: It's ok that teams like the Patriots who don't need a quarterback didn't sign him. It's ok if a team didn't sign him because of his opinions. It's ok is no team at all wants to sign him.
What isn't ok is if hypothetically the Browns and the Bills agree that neither will sign Kaepernick. You don't even need all 32 teams in on it, 2 would have been enough.
Seems strange for the NFL to risk a First Amendment controversy with that rule if the NFL were truly unperturbed by Kaepernick's advocacy.
> The USOC issued an apologetic statement condemning the athletes’ “untypical exhibitionism,” which violated “the basic standards of good manners and sportsmanship, which are so highly valued in the United States.” [0]
Morals clauses for athletes have existed since for athletes at least 1922, according to Wikipedia [1].
Also, there's an argument to be had over the unbacked assertion that "SJWs" were the reason behind the "offends a portion or group of the public", as opposed to, the actual thing that that clause is now being used to punish. You know what else happened around the same time as the "SJW era"? China becoming a world-dominant economic and political force.
[0] https://www.outsideonline.com/2402740/john-carlos-tommie-smi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morals_clause
This strategy of demanding proof for something that is easily discoverable through any simple google search ("history of censorship") is such an exhausting argumentative tactic.
There is no "liberal censorship", unless you can point me to an instance where a bunch of liberals imprisoned someone for offending them.
When people complain about liberal censorship, they're really complaining that other people have the right to respond negatively to what you say. Cancel culture is also not censorship, and it would be childish to conflate those two things.
'Cancel culture' may not be censorship in its technical definition, but isn't that effectively what it's achieving? A comedian, for example, tweets some half-baked remark that some (loud minority) find offensive. Of course, they do respond to this negatively but the media also runs with it and this group of loud people call for the cancellation of shows, appearances, and sometimes even call for the firing of the person.
You are correct in that this person, even after all of this, has outlets and ways to practice their freedom of speech - but it's essentially sending other people a not-so-subtle sign that there are certain things they simply shouldn't say, lest they would like a twitter mob aimed at them.
Occasionally, older public remarks are even dug up by journalists and used to smear the character of those people who made the remarks today. There needs to be some form of restitution, but one currently does not seem to be well defined.
Moreover, my above comment is grayed out right now as some people downvote it. Let's all think about that irony for a moment.
Censorship is the simple act of not allowing someone to say something.
Companies censor all the time. Movie studios. Recording companies.
I've noticed this trend with people, they identify something as negative, in this case censorship, and then they try and contort definitions to excuse their involvement in it. Because that's a bad thing and they're good people and good people don't do bad things.
I'm going to come in with a hot take: censorship isn't inherently bad. It just is. Censorship can be used to focus discussion on what's important. To keep garbage out of discourse. Those are good uses of it. Yes, it can be used to simply silence dissent. That is a bad use. But just because it can be used in a bad way doesn't make it bad itself.
How do you figure that cancel culture isn't defacto censorship? Deplatforming somebody because you don't agree with their viewpoints is absolutely censorship in a moral sense.
Calling people "childish" who don't agree with you is a weasel tactic. Those tactics should invalidate the whole argument, but for some reason they don't. Make the argument without the weasel tactics if you want people to listen.
Saying it didn't make it true. Do us all the favor of a more convincing argument.
Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California.
Tiananmen square is an immediate and obvious pick. People who publicly referenced the events of Tiananmen square were not allowed to interact with China on a business level. If Hearthstone had existed back then and the streamer had mentioned Tiananmen square, Blizzard would (I think) have taken exactly the same approach as they did today. There's no co-opting of Western politicking here.
> Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California.
Blizzard is heavily integrated with Tencent in China. The actions they took are to preserve that relationship. Ergo the censorship of China is what we're looking at here - without it this event would not have occurred.
You have this reversed. Blue checkmarks learned these tactics from the original Maosists and Stalinists.