Is this really the best move? Blizzard made a smart move; the player was going to piss off a large portion of their user base. Freedom of speech works both ways.
I think in an era where almost all communication happens over a small number of platforms that are controlled by companies, we might have think about that one really hard.
In the end I think this isn't going to just apply to speech but many facets of modern life that are increasingly controlled by companies instead of governments.
For example within 10 days of Wikileaks publishing 'cablegate' back in 2010, Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, and Western Union all blocked donations to the site. [1] This effectively destroyed nearly all of their funding. As we've reached an era where a variety of absolutely critical industries are completely or near completely monopolized, it means that things like the first amendment are much less meaningful. If the government wanted to ban some form of speech, all they need to do is to make a call to a handful of companies and, like that, they've banned > 90% of discussion of it. And from the company's perspectives, they can agree to cooperate and expect rich rewards and favorable treatment from the government in the future, or they can refuse to no real gain and end up facing the full fury of an incredibly far-reaching government.
Perhaps one of the many reasons that the founding fathers were so obsessed with keeping governments small and relatively weak. This power of coercion is in some ways even more dangerous than any law that might be passed since it can often effect the exact same end while keeping most of the public generally uninformed.
They certainly don't, but then you have to be ready to face the consequences of silencing people based on your internal politics (i.e. those people not being your customers anymore, or, in this case, wanting you to delete all the personal data they have on you).
ActiBlizz can certainly decide that appeasing the chinese market is worth more to them than the western one, but I don't understand why then their western customers can't complain/decide to not do business with them anymore
That I can explain. The world tide is currently shifting - gaming just happens to be one very clear example of it. China, for instance, literally has more gamers than the US has citizens. [1](2014) The US market is still #1 in terms of revenue, but that's ending imminently - literally perhaps next year. We're currently at $36.87bn compared to China's $36.54bn. [2] And that's with an untapped market of hundreds of millions in China. And their rapid economic growth means all players, new and old, are going to be able and willing to spend more money. Within the next two decades, the US gaming market will likely be a fraction of the Chinese market.
This creates an interesting little micro-paradox. Customers in the US claiming they will boycott Blizzard over this situation are precisely why Blizzard is motivated to act in this fashion. Because there would be a mirror situation in China with a vastly larger customer base acting in an equal but opposite fashion. Until people (around the world) can accept individuals behaving in a way they find deplorable, we're only going to end up in a world where the biggest wins. And as the geopolitical status quo changes, that's no longer simply synonymous with USA or even the west in general.
This is one of the many reasons I think the trend of 'free speech is only the government' is so incredibly myopic. People don't consider that the views they support will inevitably also come under fire from the powers that be - and they'll rapidly find themselves facing silencing and censorship with no recourse. Free speech is a value, not an amendment. Dismissing this because it's convenient is something that will only come back to haunt people as the tides shift, which they inevitably do. We should base our values on a system of ethos, not whichever chain of often contradictory positions we think will work as a means to achieve whatever ends we think we're going to get.
> I do think that Blizzard was correct in issuing him a penalty for his actions. They do not want to set the precedent for their official broadcasts being used as political tools. The players agreed to particular rules for behavior, and he violated those rules.
[..]
> All that having been said, there are additional factors at play here. The punishment meted out to Blitzchung is incredibly harsh. I could understand a fine, or even a short suspension from competitive play, but removal from Grandmasters, clawing back the prizes he already earned, and banning him for a full year seems completely overboard to an extent that feels completely unwarranted and unfair.
> I won’t pretend to understand either the intricacies of the geopolitical situation in China and Hong Kong or the full extent of Blizzard’s business interests there, but to me this penalty feels like it is deeply rooted in both. The heavy-handedness of it feels like someone insisted that Blizzard make an example of Blitzchung, not only to discourage others from similar acts in the future but also to appease those upset by the outburst itself.
> That kind of appeasement is simply not something I can in good conscience be associated with. When I learned about the ruling, I reached out to Blizzard and informed them that I no longer feel comfortable casting the Grandmasters finals at BlizzCon. I will not be a smiling face on camera that tacitly endorses this decision. Unless something changes, I will have no involvement in Grandmasters moving forward.
What isn't even mentioned there is that the two casters apparently got fired, too. They didn't know he was going to say that, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe they laughed supportingly, or didn't show enough disapproval, I haven't seen it. But the punishment was extremely heavy-handed and disproportionate at any rate, no matter how you look at it.
Here is the video [1] with complete context. Unfortunately I've yet to find a complete translated transcript. But from what I've read (from potentially unreliable sources) the casters said 'Go ahead and say those 8 words and we'll wrap up here. There's nothing else to talk about. Let's lower our heads.' He then said 'Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time' while wearing a gas mask. Guessing that's 8 words in Mandarin. They then laugh and clap.
This is actually the thing that most frustrates me about these protests and issue in general. Finding complete, in context, recordings of the critical events is so incredibly difficult. This makes no sense since we are now in an era where everything is on camera from 500 different angles. But it is what it is. And of course providing in context video gets downvoted, because it makes the issues look less black and white. But that to me is the clearest example of idiocracy. We should not seek to create Hollywood villains and heroes in how things are presented. People should make judgments based on reality which, almost invariably, is more of a million shades of gray rather than good vs evil, right vs wrong.
Thank you so much for that! And I agree, even though I do support the protests in HK in their five demands, there is no need to exaggerate or cut away context, ever, and it happens habitually. Yet, trying to be fair, just adding very relevant information, often gets one put onto a "side" and treated accordingly. This, too, needs to be resisted.
> Constructive criticism and self-criticism are extremely important for any revolutionary organization. Without them, people tend to drown in their mistakes, not learn from them.
-- Assata Shakur
> These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists.
No but they are not entitled to customers and they have the right to express their dissatisfaction. Just as China can threaten Blizzard with no business unless they kowtow, customers from other countries can threaten Blizzard with no business for giving in to China's demands.
"Self-censorship" happens every day. I'm allowed to say whatever I want but I'm not allowed to force someone to give me a platform for my speech. This is not a violation of free speech in any way.
I agree with you, we should not tolerate intolerance. Why should Blizzard have to tolerate someone else's views? They are perfectly within their right to deny someone an association or a platform whose views that they do not agree with.
China is within its rights to demand Blizzard censor content. US user/viewers are within their rights to criticize and boycott them. Blizzard is within its right to change their policy or ignore the criticism.
Are they demanding that Blizzard "censor content" or is Blizzard trying to stray away from politics? I don't think there is anything wrong with Blizzard stepping in to say "no you can't use our platform, our company to promote this message" a message that's REALLY divisive amongst their user base.
>Are they demanding that Blizzard "censor content" or is Blizzard trying to stray away from politics?
I expect there is some of both. Fear of government intervention and fear of public backlash in China.
I agree it is very understandable that blizzard would want to be apolitical and discourage divisive speech. The question is what to do once the speech has occured, because now blizzard is in the hot seat where their response can be REALLY divisive.
I personally think the response was overly putative, especially the firing of the hapless hosts.
Especially so, given that 90% of their business is outside of asia, and only a fraction of the remainder is in China.
The question remains where customers will accept blizzard drawing the line. They would be equally within their legal rights to restrict streamers, game chat, or out of game speech.
No. The best form of protest against their actions would be for Blizzards' customers to remove their profit from them.
Question : is 'freedom of speech' an action point objective somewhere? It's rare that I hear it used defensively so often, and the past few days have been non-stop "Oh, you like freedom of speech? then you must like (X bad thing it allows for/causes.).
Is this some kind of coordinated strategy? It feels like one.
Have you created an account solely for the purpose of defending the CCP? I ask because your account was created today, and the only comments you've made are pro-CCP.
e: It appears someone has flagged my comment. While it wasn't directly responding to the statement by OP, I can't help but think that this may have been done in bad faith.
Yes, they aren't legally obliged to provide a platform that allows freedom of speech.
Yet they also have to expect a backlash if they don't provide it,as freedom of speech is integral part of our culture.
People expect that, and any defence of type 'but by law we aren't required to provide that!' will just piss their western customers off.
EDIT:
not to mention that in this case the punishment was severe. They could try to stay apolitical by just giving him a slap on the wrist and a temporary ban on tournaments. It would both send a message and work as a deterrent.
Strangely enough Activision-Blizzard soon after that announced their Call of Duty Mobile - designed by Chinese company team responsible for Diablo Immortal.. which was subsidized by CCP.
It was stone cold calculation of: profit loss from hearthstone backlash vs earnings from Chinese mobile market
Is there no way to (mostly) automate GDPR responses? I too want to see Blizzard crash, but I don't like abuse of the law, and even less when the law in question has as many upsides as the GDPR.
It may be possible with greenfields projects (write a single service to store this data). A system that in unprepared for GDPR (read: all systems before GDPR) habitually store redundant information everywhere. E.g. in-game chat logs.
The hard part about automating the responses is that most companies haven't put in the large amount of investment necessary to fully automate data provenance. I'd bet that most companies have enough data to actually figure out what is about which user if push comes to shove, but imagine having to crawl through your 5-10 years of accumulated ORM and ETL hackery to fully automate the ability to swim upstream through all of the dark corners of your microservices to pull that data together.
I'm obviously exaggerating a bit, but for companies like Blizzard that have been continuously developing Battle.net for over two decades, you can bet there are some dark corners in the data pipeline.
How about offering jobs to blizzard employees? Might work better in the long term and a good PR move.
But food for thought here: can America win when fighting both Russia and China at the same time? They say Germany's mistake in WW2 was fighting America and Russia simulta eously.
My opinion is to stop fighting Russia, let them have their way with non-NATO eastern europe and central Asia so long as they steer clear of genocide and terrorism.
As far as China goes,offense is the best defense. Perhaps with help from Russia,american allied western europe can compete with China's belt-road initiative? Ex-colonial western europe has the upper hand to compete in Africa. Just going by the nature of China's high-profile hacks (OPM and Equifax for example),it seems influence and long-term control of the west is their goal. They have no delusions of open war or a quick collapse of the west but they simply do not want to be told what to do just like America will not be told what to do when "advancing democracy" all over the world with or without force. China is in the process of doing to america,east asia and africa what America has been doing in Africa and South America for decades. Russia on the other hand wants regional control, their former glory restored and like china they also don't want to be told what to do. Except russia shows no sign of ambitions for world domination like China. Either way, America with all the internal strife would find it very hard to win in a proxy war against either china or russia alone.
I only hope things don't escalate to military involvement in HK.
DMCA is the other one that can be abused easily. I've seen people weild DMCA on Reddit like a weapon, attacking entire forums with copyright requests and Reddit automatically taking stuff down and even suspending accounts for "repeat copyright infringement".
Always the sign of a poor law, but sometimes useful to expose it. I hope it gets documented well.
In Poland, there's no abuse whatsover, since they're requesting a scan of ID to let you delete your account, and that's illegal. It used to be a can of worms and people had loans taken in their name without permission.
By the way, when you submit a valid DMCA takedown notice, you have to identify yourself and make a declaration under penalty of perjury. There is a specific remedy for a false notice in 17 USC §512(f):
> Misrepresentations.—Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section—
> (1) that material or activity is infringing, or
> (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification,
> shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.
Abusing that is technically illegal, although due to how favoured rights owners are (even presumptive ones), I've never heard of anyone getting even a slap on the wrist for it.
GDPR, though, is made to be used for this. It's companies' responsibility to set up processes so they can give you this information easily; if they haven't, you're doing a public service by encouraging it. And it's perfectly reasonsble to ask for an audit of how they treat your personal info, when they just very publicly cozied up to an oppressive police state.
Why not "punish" them by criticizing them, or boycotting them? Even "review bombing" sucks, but abusing the GDPR, that really sucks.
I'm very much in support of the protests, I think what Blizzard did was shameful, and I loved seeing the hundreds of memes on their subreddits. I'm not completely against civil disobedience and some tasteful vandalism. But still, that doesn't mean anything goes at the drop of a hat, there's a thin line between solidarity with a cause or a group by a massive number of people, and a mass stampede to smash and destroy all enemies of said cause or group, which can easily lead the whole thing into a ditch, not to mention rob it of all moral standing.
I am really curious what they do have on me, especially now that they start to expand greatly into chinesee market. I don't even play their games any more as they all turned into bland pulp.
I was referring to the article, not you :) I think it's totally fair to be reminded that hey, actually, what do they have on me and not hold off until the "punishment" is over, but then what I said obviously doesn't apply to you per se.
How is this an abuse of GDPR? I own my data and have the right to withdraw my consent for a company to store and process that data for whatever reason I want. If people no longer feel like they want Blizzard to have their data they have the right to withdraw that consent. What part of this is "abusing" GDPR? The law is working exactly as intended.
Something that I think would do more is for the e-sports community to keep criticizing the CCP on live streams. Ping your favorite players on the issue and ask what they think. A lot of them will probably try to distance themselves from politics altogether but some of them might actually respond in ways that piss people off. If that generates more demands from the CCP to ban people then Blizzard has to think long and hard about who's paying the bills; the players or the CCP.
47 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 84.8 ms ] threadThe last few years of de-platforming have laid the groundwork for the CCP, that's what happens when you don't have principles.
For example within 10 days of Wikileaks publishing 'cablegate' back in 2010, Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, and Western Union all blocked donations to the site. [1] This effectively destroyed nearly all of their funding. As we've reached an era where a variety of absolutely critical industries are completely or near completely monopolized, it means that things like the first amendment are much less meaningful. If the government wanted to ban some form of speech, all they need to do is to make a call to a handful of companies and, like that, they've banned > 90% of discussion of it. And from the company's perspectives, they can agree to cooperate and expect rich rewards and favorable treatment from the government in the future, or they can refuse to no real gain and end up facing the full fury of an incredibly far-reaching government.
Perhaps one of the many reasons that the founding fathers were so obsessed with keeping governments small and relatively weak. This power of coercion is in some ways even more dangerous than any law that might be passed since it can often effect the exact same end while keeping most of the public generally uninformed.
[1] - https://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html
This creates an interesting little micro-paradox. Customers in the US claiming they will boycott Blizzard over this situation are precisely why Blizzard is motivated to act in this fashion. Because there would be a mirror situation in China with a vastly larger customer base acting in an equal but opposite fashion. Until people (around the world) can accept individuals behaving in a way they find deplorable, we're only going to end up in a world where the biggest wins. And as the geopolitical status quo changes, that's no longer simply synonymous with USA or even the west in general.
This is one of the many reasons I think the trend of 'free speech is only the government' is so incredibly myopic. People don't consider that the views they support will inevitably also come under fire from the powers that be - and they'll rapidly find themselves facing silencing and censorship with no recourse. Free speech is a value, not an amendment. Dismissing this because it's convenient is something that will only come back to haunt people as the tides shift, which they inevitably do. We should base our values on a system of ethos, not whichever chain of often contradictory positions we think will work as a means to achieve whatever ends we think we're going to get.
[1] - https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-number-of-chinese-game...
[2] - https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-10-countries-by-gam...
http://bmkgaming.com/statement-on-blitzchung/
> I do think that Blizzard was correct in issuing him a penalty for his actions. They do not want to set the precedent for their official broadcasts being used as political tools. The players agreed to particular rules for behavior, and he violated those rules.
[..]
> All that having been said, there are additional factors at play here. The punishment meted out to Blitzchung is incredibly harsh. I could understand a fine, or even a short suspension from competitive play, but removal from Grandmasters, clawing back the prizes he already earned, and banning him for a full year seems completely overboard to an extent that feels completely unwarranted and unfair.
> I won’t pretend to understand either the intricacies of the geopolitical situation in China and Hong Kong or the full extent of Blizzard’s business interests there, but to me this penalty feels like it is deeply rooted in both. The heavy-handedness of it feels like someone insisted that Blizzard make an example of Blitzchung, not only to discourage others from similar acts in the future but also to appease those upset by the outburst itself.
> That kind of appeasement is simply not something I can in good conscience be associated with. When I learned about the ruling, I reached out to Blizzard and informed them that I no longer feel comfortable casting the Grandmasters finals at BlizzCon. I will not be a smiling face on camera that tacitly endorses this decision. Unless something changes, I will have no involvement in Grandmasters moving forward.
What isn't even mentioned there is that the two casters apparently got fired, too. They didn't know he was going to say that, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe they laughed supportingly, or didn't show enough disapproval, I haven't seen it. But the punishment was extremely heavy-handed and disproportionate at any rate, no matter how you look at it.
This is actually the thing that most frustrates me about these protests and issue in general. Finding complete, in context, recordings of the critical events is so incredibly difficult. This makes no sense since we are now in an era where everything is on camera from 500 different angles. But it is what it is. And of course providing in context video gets downvoted, because it makes the issues look less black and white. But that to me is the clearest example of idiocracy. We should not seek to create Hollywood villains and heroes in how things are presented. People should make judgments based on reality which, almost invariably, is more of a million shades of gray rather than good vs evil, right vs wrong.
[1] - https://youtu.be/KyxO0Ea1_kM?t=2152
> Constructive criticism and self-criticism are extremely important for any revolutionary organization. Without them, people tend to drown in their mistakes, not learn from them.
-- Assata Shakur
> These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists.
-- George Orwell, http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go
Fun part Blizzard "has" a motto, "Every voice matters".
No, we most certainly do not.
I expect there is some of both. Fear of government intervention and fear of public backlash in China.
I agree it is very understandable that blizzard would want to be apolitical and discourage divisive speech. The question is what to do once the speech has occured, because now blizzard is in the hot seat where their response can be REALLY divisive.
I personally think the response was overly putative, especially the firing of the hapless hosts. Especially so, given that 90% of their business is outside of asia, and only a fraction of the remainder is in China.
The question remains where customers will accept blizzard drawing the line. They would be equally within their legal rights to restrict streamers, game chat, or out of game speech.
No. The best form of protest against their actions would be for Blizzards' customers to remove their profit from them.
Question : is 'freedom of speech' an action point objective somewhere? It's rare that I hear it used defensively so often, and the past few days have been non-stop "Oh, you like freedom of speech? then you must like (X bad thing it allows for/causes.).
Is this some kind of coordinated strategy? It feels like one.
e: It appears someone has flagged my comment. While it wasn't directly responding to the statement by OP, I can't help but think that this may have been done in bad faith.
Yet they also have to expect a backlash if they don't provide it,as freedom of speech is integral part of our culture.
People expect that, and any defence of type 'but by law we aren't required to provide that!' will just piss their western customers off.
EDIT: not to mention that in this case the punishment was severe. They could try to stay apolitical by just giving him a slap on the wrist and a temporary ban on tournaments. It would both send a message and work as a deterrent.
Strangely enough Activision-Blizzard soon after that announced their Call of Duty Mobile - designed by Chinese company team responsible for Diablo Immortal.. which was subsidized by CCP.
It was stone cold calculation of: profit loss from hearthstone backlash vs earnings from Chinese mobile market
I'm obviously exaggerating a bit, but for companies like Blizzard that have been continuously developing Battle.net for over two decades, you can bet there are some dark corners in the data pipeline.
But food for thought here: can America win when fighting both Russia and China at the same time? They say Germany's mistake in WW2 was fighting America and Russia simulta eously.
My opinion is to stop fighting Russia, let them have their way with non-NATO eastern europe and central Asia so long as they steer clear of genocide and terrorism.
As far as China goes,offense is the best defense. Perhaps with help from Russia,american allied western europe can compete with China's belt-road initiative? Ex-colonial western europe has the upper hand to compete in Africa. Just going by the nature of China's high-profile hacks (OPM and Equifax for example),it seems influence and long-term control of the west is their goal. They have no delusions of open war or a quick collapse of the west but they simply do not want to be told what to do just like America will not be told what to do when "advancing democracy" all over the world with or without force. China is in the process of doing to america,east asia and africa what America has been doing in Africa and South America for decades. Russia on the other hand wants regional control, their former glory restored and like china they also don't want to be told what to do. Except russia shows no sign of ambitions for world domination like China. Either way, America with all the internal strife would find it very hard to win in a proxy war against either china or russia alone.
I only hope things don't escalate to military involvement in HK.
Always the sign of a poor law, but sometimes useful to expose it. I hope it gets documented well.
> Misrepresentations.—Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section— > (1) that material or activity is infringing, or > (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, > shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.
GDPR, though, is made to be used for this. It's companies' responsibility to set up processes so they can give you this information easily; if they haven't, you're doing a public service by encouraging it. And it's perfectly reasonsble to ask for an audit of how they treat your personal info, when they just very publicly cozied up to an oppressive police state.
I'm very much in support of the protests, I think what Blizzard did was shameful, and I loved seeing the hundreds of memes on their subreddits. I'm not completely against civil disobedience and some tasteful vandalism. But still, that doesn't mean anything goes at the drop of a hat, there's a thin line between solidarity with a cause or a group by a massive number of people, and a mass stampede to smash and destroy all enemies of said cause or group, which can easily lead the whole thing into a ditch, not to mention rob it of all moral standing.
I am really curious what they do have on me, especially now that they start to expand greatly into chinesee market. I don't even play their games any more as they all turned into bland pulp.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199701
If they didn't do the work to automate this 3 years and half after the law was voted, then it's on them.