Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments
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A lot of private companies control exclusive access to something with a value that dwarfs what you pay for it. I pay nothing for access to Twitter; if I build a business or a social life on the platform, it becomes something I would pay thousands of dollars to prevent losing. I pay nothing for access to Facebook; the memories they store at this point in my life may be nearly priceless. I've paid a low triple digit sum for Blizzard games, yet the time and social investments I have made in those games make them a couple of orders of magnitude more valuable to me, now.
The problem is that since these companies control services so valuable to me, anyone who wishes to hurt me for any reason can do it through them. Since no one is paying them to defend me -- I'm certainly not -- they have no resources commensurate with the value of what they're defending.
The situation we're in now is one in which political thugs apply pressure to private companies to hurt individuals, in an attempt to chill free speech.
Free speech is expensive and valuable, and defending it from those who would wish to destroy it requires commensurate resources. We should not expect Blizzard to stand up to the Chinese government; that is the job of the Chinese people, of other goverments, of perhaps the whole world.
To my view, Blizzard is like a store clerk who gives up the store's money to a robber. It would be nice if he was a hero, but he's not equipped for it. Nobody is paying 7-11 to stand up to violent crime. The problem is too big and expensive to ask individuals to deal with. Society paying for police and courts is at least a response on the right scale.
The mechanisms we have for protecting individual rights are antiquaited, and need to be rethought to deal with the current situation. Perhaps a model like the unified response to patent trolls could work? I think, if we want free speech to exist in the current environment, it will have to be something that big.
When the Constitution was written, free speech meant literally that, your ability to go to a public space and physically talk. No third party was involved as it is with any telecommunication technology. So the resources consumed in that speech were totally your own.
The only way to strictly have that equivalent in the telecommunications realm is for me to own every communication circuit between me and those who I want to communicate with.
So lets say I have 10 wires coming from my house to other houses, and someone I know has 10 other wires connected to a different set of houses, that I'm not directly connected to.
I can rely on my own self and build new wires (expensive) or I can work with this person to forward my communication (probably cheaper but he/she can view/hear my communication).
If I want to communicate with someone else beyond my network, then a third party is carrying my speech, and we're really no longer in realm of free speech. This third party has rights and should be able to refuse to carry my speech for the same rights and reasons as me, unless entered into a contract beforehand.
I think your real question is should corporations be treated as legal persons to the extent that they have the Constitutional right of speech.
The first amendment was written when it was much more difficult to abridge speech. You would have to trust hearsay and either remove someone from your property or have them face some consequence based on the word of somebody who heard you. Governments could punish you with crimes, but that was it.
Unless you were publishing work through somebody who owned a printing press, you were in complete control of the medium and delivery of your words and few people could restrict you and your words were soon forgotten.
Now most things that most people say go through a filter of several others infrastructure and they all can record what you say and limit what goes through.
We need active speech protections for platforms which act like the public square. The newspaper doesn't need to publish my whacky opinions, but Facebook needs to let me post as myself freely or change how it fundamentally operates from a space to talk to a publisher of selected material.
Blizzard is an American company. They don't need to answer to China. They may choose to do so, just as consumers may choose not to play their games.
A better comparison is Blizzard being a store owner who sells cakes to everyone, when one day a Nazi comes in and says you can't sell cakes to that uppity black person who upset me or you'll never be able to sell cakes to Nazis again.
Blizzard then gets to decide which is more important, business with Nazis or standing up for a core set of values.
As may occur in this instance, the free market may decide if they're going to side with Nazis, Nazis get to be their only client.
At this point people are deciding how delicious they think Blizzard cakes are, and if they still want to eat them.
I think that's beautiful, actually. Your ability to stay within this mini-society's good graces is entirely dependent on how you treat other people, and not on how much wealth you funnel in from the outside (to a degree).
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.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/07/china-censorship-daryl-mo...
Is software special in this case somehow?
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. :-)
Hopefully this pushes more people to use open source software.
Which makes me believe we need some kind of trusted "morality authority", which would process information similar to this and make informed decisions who to boycott, how and when. Less informed would be able to make an impact without having to do research (which not everyone would do equally well)
Obviously this authority must operate with complete transparency, so that we could verify its decision process when required.
Any hostile actions against it must be treated as a crime against humanity?
Somehow it must be immune from corruption. Perhaps some mechanism to revoke user trust in case of wrongdoings.
You do realize how hilarious that is juxtaposed to the Chinese government, which is literally a 'morality authority,' right?
Wait, what? A boycott is not doing something. It takes no time, you just choose to do something different, and let people know why you made the choice. I stopped playing Hearthstone, and let people know why. Cake, no time. Same for NBA, which I love, so I hope they'll pull their head out, but again, no time involved here.
Boycotting is the easiest form of protest. Don't be...lazy?
Such an organization need not say that you should boycott anything (i.e. be a moral authority) but instead can say that IF you think that American companies participating in the Chinese censorship machine regarding Hong Kong is bad THEN boycotting companies X Y and Z would be effective. The morality comes from the users. In order to organize against a common nebulous baddie we need a mapping from nebulous baddies to actionable targets.
As much as I hate that everything needs to be a social network these days, this probably needs a social aspect--a place where you can post evidence that you cut the power to Company X's headquarters, or whatever, so you can check back occasionally and feel relevant when people attach metadata to your crime.
It would have to be careful to avoid being too specific to be liable for the actions of its users, while not being so vague that users can't use it to channel their frustration towards actions that actually do harm the entities identified. Alternatively, it could be specific as hell but hard to take down.
I guess what I'm proposing is something like Kickstarter, but for civil unrest.
This seems to always be an invitation to corruption though. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that. So getting to "trusted" may be hard. In the US we have Brent Kavanaugh, and in China they have the CCP, and in some countries they have religious clerics... I can't think of an example where there is such a body that I would trust.
Just sounds like cancel culture to me. And it has horrible results.
Isn't that effectively the government's job in a democracy? They're elected (directly or indirectly) to enact the will of the people. Unless you have a different scheme in mind for constituting this "moral authority".
The last step for me to stop doing business with a bad actor is by giving up my privacy.
> As Andy reported earlier today, Blitzchung did not back down after the sudden removal of the broadcast, during which he wore a gas mask and goggles before shouting "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" Following the incident he released a statement elaborating on his stance, writing "I know what my action on stream means. It could cause me lot of trouble, even my personal safety in real life. But I think it's my duty to say something about the issue."
Good for the people of Hong Kong.
The topic of Hong Kong didn't struck me as sensational/desperate as it deserves until a Hong Kong friend send me this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q Am moved by the clip, especially for the first 50s. It is english sub-ed. Would recommend anyone interested in the topic give it a look
That's crap. There's a Hong Kong-related story on the front page every couple days for a while now. Perhaps you didn't notice the pagination buttons at the bottom when sorting by date?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Social media flagging is censorship. More and more people are calling on videos to be flagged, taken down, etc — then we run into instances like this one where we wish the mechanism wasn't in place at all.
I hope HK brings to world back to a recognition of the important of free speech and that the world brings attention back to HK.
That's definitely not true. Hong Kong has been discussed a great deal here, and China even more. These are probably the most-discussed topics of the last month; if not, I can't think of what would be. Perhaps climate change.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
This one is the top story, but "Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong", "Hong Kong protest safety app banned from iOS store", "Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests", and others all got substantial attention.
That's not correct, if you search over the past month and sort by Most Popular. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... This story is #1, but #2 and #3 combined outstrip it by themselves.
And they're both also about American companies censoring themselves and their users on behalf of China. For better or worse, it's that in particular that gets HN's attention.
1. Does the protestors representing the majority of citizens? If yes at this stage why the working class in Hong Kong hasn't started long term strike yet? I would imagine that the most effective non violence method of protesting by citizens would be stop working. That would for one stop the tax flow to the government.
2. Is it necessary for protestors to be violent against pro-China civilians/properties? I'm aware that the protestors have been subject to violence from both police and mobs alike, but fighting for democracy should be a higher cause than revenge? Aren't they fight for freedom of speech among others? Or it's just freedom for themselves and violence and totalitarianism for who else disagrees? [1]
Again I love freedom to the point I've spent many years fighting it for myself and helped a few people. I support Taiwan to be an independent country. But we all know many bad things have been committed under the name of freedom as well. Now I'm not sure if the Hong Kong protestors are fighting under the name of freedom to actually express their hatred toward mainlanders? Thanks for reading and hope my questions would not offend anyone. Just would like to understand the situation better.
Edit: some explanations on the downvotes would be nice.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GR88q8pIw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYuGYLesx0 (the planting of CCP flag near the end is really distasteful for me)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFb2chXt9k
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3031906.... (trashing trains while passengers still inside)
(Toby Guu is a Canadian software developer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Jgp7-tXfc
The simultaneity of the NBA and now Blizzard so publicly siding with Beijing may elevate this out of the realm of commercial issues (subject to boycotts) into a political one.
No easy answers. In this case, maybe there is a relatively simple rule: Supporting democracy must not in itself be regarded as offensive...
That’s why language policing, hate speech laws, Twitter mobs, and bully-the-bully efforts are abominations. So really, the answer is easy: everyone has the right to offend, and has no right not to be offended. Your simple rule doesn’t go far enough.
You can't have both "Free Speech" and "You Can't Say Anything Offensive" at the same time, because there is too much overlap. So you have to choose. The US constitution is pretty clear that "Free Speech" is the higher principle.
It's not hard to tell the difference actually. You know when you are offended quite obviously.
The hard part is knowing when other people are offended. This is why we can't have rules based on subjective experience.
I remember reading an article about how someone breaking your heart is a much more egregious crime than shoplifting. Yet, there is no law against breaking hearts.
E.g. I don't agree with Trump's policies, I generally disagree on most topics with his voters, but I wholeheartedly support their right to voice their opinions. I want them to voice their opinions, even if sometimes they will result in rules that I dislike. I'm too terrified of the alternative where a certain group is not allowed to participate.
In an open society, there can and should be heated debates, sides that stand firm behind their beliefs and everyone should be prepared to fight (in debate) for what they deem important. Crucially however, no debate should be won by silencing the other side through decree.
It is easy to handwave this case away as fringe, but it is only fringe inasmuch as you only see the tip of an iceberg. As other posts have pointed out, this seemingly low impact act by Blizzard is actually a sign of a cultural collision.
Where the culture of open dispute and free expression of ideas is met with a closed and conformist culture of be silent or be silenced by force.
We must fight back against this problem every time it surfaces, because the moment we stop, we lose. Whenever it becomes normalized and accepted that corporations that arose from the support and foundations of a free society can turn on those principles whenever they deem profitable, we lose a bit of those freedoms.
If history is of any indication, freedoms once lost this way can only ever bought back by bloodshed.
Calling for liberation of any territory is genuinely offensive to the government from which one is calling for it to be liberated, and to people who support that government (and often to those who support the territorial integrity of the relevant state event if they don't strongly support the government in question.)
What if the people actually prefer another form of government like monarchy?
That's because it's not up to the prankster or the offender or a third party to decide if one is suffering. It's up to the offended, mocked or bullied one who are the only ones knowing what they feel.
Of course, in the public political space, everybody tries to play the victim/innocent game to their advantage.
Honest question: Can we call this unfair if it was already laid out as part of their rules?
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.
Blizzard has been suspending plenty of pro players in plenty of their games for all kinds of questionable, and not so questionable reasons.
And because Blizzard is a private company, offering a service they maintain, they have the house right, they have the final say about who can partake and who can't.
To that end, they don't need the Chinese government to pressure them because they will already do it themselves to make their product as uncontroversial as possible. In that context politics is just not something that Blizzard, or any of the big publishers, want to be as a part of their "e-sport scene".
What they want is the least controversy possible and the lowest ages ratings possible, so they can sell their products to as many people as possible. That's their main and only motivation here, not "pleasing the CCP!".
Ubisoft straight up said the changes were for compliance for their plans to expand into Asia. With not a single mention of a lower age-rating. [1]
> We are currently working towards preparing Rainbow Six Siege for expansion into Asian territories. As such, there will be some adjustments made to our maps and icons to ensure compliance.
> In addition, we can guarantee that any future changes are aligned with the global regulations we are working towards.
While I don't agree with the gamer rage it caused, the changes were made unambiguously for release in China.
1. https://rainbow6.ubisoft.com/siege/en-us/news/152-337194-16/...
But they are not a private company. Blizzard is a component of Activision Blizzard, Inc., a publicly-held corporation traded under ATVI on the Nasdaq.
This is actually part of the problem. If they were still privately held, we would much more likely be sitting on an imminent 2020 Diablo/Starcraft/etc PC title release, rather than mobile game rehashes, 'classic' relaunches of decades old products, etc. Privately held companies seem to be the only companies with consolidation of power and control required to stand against ridiculous "profit in every market at any cost" trends.
Just take a look at Valve Software for a comparison of the private vs public effect on a company with a large creative aspect. I realize they haven't put out anything new in ages, but at the same time, has Valve really compromised on any of the core values they've built over the last decade or so? As far as I am aware, the Steam store is about as open and censorship-free as you can get in this era of entertainment.
Either way you end up embroiled in politics; the only difference is whether you let a foreign country dictate your behavior, or make your own decisions.
Except it's not a matter of some Chinese customers taking their business elsewhere. They don't have "the house right" if they are facing consequences from the Chinese government for exercising their freedom of association.
And most people here were endorsing this right when it came to things they didn't like while I and many others were pointing out that one day this sort of stuff would be applied to things they don't like.
Now that it's being applied to things the majority don't like is there any support for some sort of universal service obligation?
https://twitter.com/InvenGlobal/status/1180954142396710912
Blitzchung is wearing a tear gas mask and laughingly says "reclaim Hong Kong, revolution of our time [光復香港 時代革命]" in Mandarin.
This slogan (which is also translated 'Liberate Hong Kong' or 'restore Hong Kong') is ubiquitous in the protests; you can read more about its meaning here: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3021518...
Blitzchung also issued this statement:
"As you know there are serious protests in my country now. My call on stream was just another form of participation of the protest that I wish to grab more attention. I put so much effort in that social movement in the past few months, that I sometimes couldn't focus on preparing my Grandmaster match. I know what my action on stream means. It could cause me lot of trouble, even my personal safety in real life. But I think it's my duty to say something about the issue."
Source of the statement: https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/9242/hong-kong-player-b...
Sadly, however, the dollar is more powerful than the the moral high ground.
Just makes me wonder where all of this is going. Americans left and right are choosing China's cultural decisions over America's cultural ... legacy for the lack of a better word.
Over money.
It's like the Americans who love America, because America made them rich, are now loving China because China is richer. I don't know which is more American, actually.
It might be more "American" to love money more than America. Americans have shown it is more important to love money more than where you were born.
It's all so ... poetically disturbing.
What does China expect? The NBA should throw the man in a private work camp/prison and re-educate him?
The issue was that it was expressed during an after game interview at one of Blizzard's gaming events, not that they had an opinion.
That's an intrinsic feature of capitalism. There's no realistic hope of corporations acting morally (hurting their own bottom-lines), because the sole metric that is valued is maximisation of profit. If they ever do something moral it's merely by "accident".
One of Capitalism's many flaws.
(1) Someone in a forum makes an "offensive" comment that's a show of support for political protestors which might anger an authoritarian government that not so incidentally happens to be of a country with a lot of customers of a product the forum supports;
(2) Someone in a forum makes an "offensive" comment that's an insulting attack on other users based on race, and the offensive nature is pretty clear to most people -- at least those who don't agree with the attack -- even if it happens to be prefaced with "I'm not racist, I'm just saying...".
These are not incredibly difficult to distinguish between. The commenter in the first case is supporting a marginalized group; the commenter in the second is attacking one. Punishing the commenter in the first case is kowtowing to an authoritarian government for baldly monetary reasons; punishing the commenter in the second case is showing support for an oppressed group in a way which is probably not going to bring you any financial benefit -- your company's accountants are not going to step in and say "you need to ban Pepe1488 for consistently sounding like a white supremacist because if you don't, it could cost us hundreds of millions of dollars" -- and whose PR benefit is, at the least, debatable. (The people in the oppressed group might love you, but if there is any press coverage whatsoever you are going to be inundated with threats.)
There's a principle involved here which can lead you to boycotting Blizzard, but that principle is "we should support the right of people to protest against their goverment." The principle isn't "you should never ban any offensive speech of any kind at any time because to do so inexorably leads you to taking the side of authoritarian governments." (Use a slippery slope argument once, and you'll use them everywhere.)
It's not just the authoritarian government that is angered, it is the people of China who remember this history of imperialism and domination. Before the first Opium War, China's economy was the largest in the world. Is has only recently begun to recover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison_statistics_of_t...
Everyone has a story about why they are oppressed. Who is oppressed and who are oppressors? What actions are oppressive, and which are not? Free speech is necessary as a way of litigating these very questions.
It's remarkable that you apparently can't even conceive of how someone could not believe one or both of these statements.
You really can't see how someone could believe China is 'marginalized'?
You really can't see how someone could believe American blacks are either not marginal, or are marginal due to their own collective choices and thus not morally supreme?
Even going beyond these, you can't conceive of a morality or worldview where being 'marginalized' doesn't give one automatic, universal moral supremacy over everyone else. Try a worldview where loyalty to family and nation come first - ever heard of that? Or a achievement-oriented worldview, where doing great things is the goal instead of try to seek 'equity' for every group. Or even just a rationalist worldview, where differnet gender, race, national, ethnic, culture groups have characteristics that lead to their outcomes and it's not a giant moral equation you have to spend your life balancing because it's inevitable.
This is the problem with western discourse today. You're so deep in your left-bubble you can't even conceive of other viewpoints, so every conclusion of yours seems obvious and incontrovertible, so you must conclude anyone who disagrees is simply evil.
this is fundamentally misguided. who gets to judge who is the marginalized individual? global geopolitics is more complicated than there being strict good actors and bad actors
You should check out Schelling Fences on Slippery Slopes[1], particularly the section "Coalitions of Resistance".
There's also a separate disagreement which I have here, which is whether silencing people is actually an effective way to create change. It takes enormous resources even for governments to enforce it effectively, as we've seen with Nazis and the USSR in the past, and with China now. With bigots, censorship on other platforms has driven them together into some real cesspool platforms such as Voat[2]. I know for myself, having grown up in a homophobic environment, that the only thing that changed my mind about gay people was meeting and talking to gay people--a strategy which was explicitly executed by Harvey Milk in his coming out campaigns. Censoring bigots does the opposite: it drives bigots into echo chambers where they will only ever converse with other bigots who reinforce their views. In short: if you're censoring bigots, you aren't addressing bigotry, you're just sweeping it under the rug so you don't have to see it.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-...
[2] https://voat.co
> Let’s go one step further, “Should a society that has elected to be tolerant be intolerant about intolerance?”
> We can answer these points using the minority rule. Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. Actually, as we saw, it will eventually destroy our world.
> So, we need to be more than intolerant with some intolerant minorities.
[0] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Even within Hong Kong there seems to be no reliable information available on aggregate views. The only poll I can find, potentially of dubious reliability, is from 2016. [1] And in that poll, the vast majority of those living within Hong Kong were against separating from China once the 'one country, two systems' agreement expires, in 2047. Only 17.4% supported independence from China even when it was just in theory and 2 decades away. What percent of the protesters are within that 17.4%, and what are the views of the 82.6% on these protests? These seem like important questions that are going unasked, let alone answered by our media and reporting. Whatever the exact numbers may be, there are a lot of people who are very much against whatever you want to call what is happening in Hong Kong. This isn't just a scenario of "good guys" vs "authoritarian government." Its large groups of people who feel very different about the same situation.
Of course you will reference propaganda and I fully agree with you. But there too I am left to wonder something. Take the average Chinese who relies on his regular sources of information for news. And now take the average American who similarly relies on his regular sources of news for information. Who would be able to provide a more accurate response to factual queries on the protests, Hong Kong's relationship with China, and the views/values/etc of those within and without the protest group? Similarly, do you think that, for instance, the New York Times has provided accurate and objective reporting on this topic? Or do you think that their reporting and presentation is attempting to present this story from a distinctly prejudiced angle?
Something that I think social media has masked for many people today is that our own views are not "THE" moral imperative for the world. In fact they, regardless of what they are, tend to be quite obscure when contrasted against the world at large. Step outside the anglosphere and it's amazing how insane we are starting to look from the outside. Or perhaps we always looked this way, but by living inside the bubble for so many years I was equally a part of the insanity.
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-china-survey-idU...
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-joe-biden-empowered-c...
I dunno.
Personally, I believe that support has shifted in computer gaming as compared to sports, and will continue to shift.
In sports we use things like spears, shoes, bicycles, up to racing cars. But none of them relies on a narrative or story, except by the story around the sport itself. Few - if any - of the sports are part of culture the way computer games already are, and we see no stopping of this progression anytime soon.
This explicit cultural relevance taken together with the fact that China, and several other countries for that matter, already has made gaming political by requiring games to not feature elements that oppose their regime, sensibilities, or culture, makes a compelling argument that competitors must be allowed a greater freedom of speech, even in the context of competitions.
There is no such thing as "apolitical", it is code for "supporting the status quo and agreeing with those currently holding power".
EDITED to correct spelling.
China has become less liberal, in the meaningful ways, since Nixon "opened up" China in the 20th century. And the flip side is that when we began exporting to them we installed pathways for China to control and de-liberalize the US.
The more economically important China becomes to the US the more it will control our companies and public political sphere.
It disturbs me that most older people I talk politics with seems to think we ought to confront China over IP violations... human rights violations and anti-democratic activity seem infinitely more important to me.
I can’t boycott the NBA as I’m not a fan - but I’ve given Blizzard a lot of time and money - in the past. What a shame. Are there other recent examples besides the NBA and this?
Natural late-stage corporate life cycle, I guess. :,c But they'll keep making EZ $$$ as long as store whales keep buying mounts and pets. :D Tell them to boycott.
If you redefine your morals to money it works well. Not sure if that's good but it seems it happened.
If someone manages to do it with Nike it will be fun to watch.
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.
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
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.
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.
>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.
EDIT: nm, was on the wrong subdomain. Account removal requested & all my blizzard games gone. I hope they'll ask me why.
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?
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.
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.
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.
No, we need to boycott Blizzard.
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.
>boycott HearthstoneI 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.
You mean Blizzard?
Blizzard/Activision is a multinational corporation. Incorporated in the US, but beholden to more cultural norms than just the US ones.
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.
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.
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.
Honestly never even heard of it so that's pretty easy then.
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.
My position was that when corporate platforms are such an important part of our communications, protecting free speech on those platforms remains important even though they're corporately owned[1]. It's easy to be pro-censorship when you agree with the censors, but corporations are amoral and if we set the standard that censorship doesn't matter, there's no guarantee that they'll only censor the way we want them to.
Consider this an "I told you so" post.
EDIT: More on this subject, perhaps a bit better-thought-out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194433
[1] I'd further argue that we shouldn't give up so much of our communication to corporately-owned platforms for this reason, but that's a separate discussion.
I'm sure I'll get someone arguing about private v.s. public oppression, but at the end of the day being a professional video game player in someone's walled garden is no less of a specialized or acquired skill than say being an expert cabinet maker.
So we're increasingly ending up in situations where people's hobbies or professions exist at the whimsical pleasure of private corporations.
If this guy talked shit about a foreign government 50 years ago and liked to play football as a hobby, and was a skilled cabinet maker that government couldn't pressure a private company to ban him from all football pitches worldwide, or exile him from cabinet making.
The answer isn't to boycott Blizzard, that's raging against the smallest cog in the machine. The answer is to eliminate these power relationships with a concerted effort of moving to free & open source software, and at the federated services when something needs to be hosted centrally.
The saddest part about this is that Blizzard simultaneous says that it supports people's rights to express their individual thoughts and opinions while disqualifying and banning a player for doing exactly that. It's corporate doublespeak. I would have more respect for them if they were simply honest and said that they (clearly) don't support the expression of thoughts and opinions which may lead to loss of business in China. That would actually be a consistent position. They can't have it both ways.
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,
—
"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."
Cutting LGBT characters and banning people who criticize the regime is entirely different.
However, in this case, we're at an Asian (not Chinese) esports event where one should be free to express their opinion. It is not as if we don't see skeleton cosplay on esport events being banned, or that Germany demands Wolfenstein esports events (?) don't contain blood and Nazi paraphernalia. It is not as if the USA complains about a nipple on TwitchCon in Amsterdam. This is about a country applying censorship beyond their jurisdiction.
Also, Blizzard only removed them from the game in china
What would be more disturbing is if they had to rewrite some orc-politics story so it wouldn't offend chinese sensibilities, and US consumers got the rewritten version as well.
The movie Red Dawn(2012) was a remake of a 1984 action film where a communist army invades the US. They updated the invader from the USSR to China, come to "repossess" the US after we defaulted on national debt. This offended the chinese, so the producers had to spend $1M editing every reference to china in the film and making it a North Korean invasion instead. This was the version US consumers were sold.
I think it is the right thing to do in order to avoid future sociopolitical references in official post-match interviews: imagine someone saying 'power to the whites' or whatever in an live Blizzard interview. Like it or not, if you urge to call this move "censorship" you (and Blizzard) would have to tolerate slurs like that.
Also: Blizzard should stand up for liberal democracy. It’s as simple as that. One can’t treat all political messages the same.
Rather than just censoring information that's transmitted to China's citizens, they are moving the censorship worldwide. I personally cannot support a company who's goes this route rather than the former.
The PRC exerts pressure on every corporate and media entity which wants access to the Chinese market, and it's amazingly subtle and effective propaganda. In movies, this means a lot of small things that the average consumer doesn't even notice anymore:
- Most blockbuster action movies have a China scene. The China scene invariably shows glistening skyscrapers, futuristic technology, and effective allies.
- You want to film in China? You don't have Chinese antagonists. Use North Koreans. Use Russians. Or some other anonymous / fake country.
Much less criticize the actual government? Hah, good joke.
Now, if average, non-Hollywood companies are self-censoring users to stay in the Chinese market, it's time to cut the umbilical cord. It's going to hurt, but at least we'll come out of it with free expression and companies who simply have to follow the rule of law. Not the rule of subtle pressure and self-censorship to help a foreign government's propaganda campaign.
How about the US forcing other companies (Huawei) into not doing business with countries it doesn't like (Iran) and attempting to extradite foreign individuals (CFO of Huawei) to advance that aim.
I'm not saying what CCP is doing is correct but the US has been doing the same shit for decades. Governments have always used companies as pawns for political purpose.
This is extremely vague. I'm pretty sure any non-trivial amount of words is virtually guaranteed to offend someone somehow.
They could stop people from warning us or confirming afterwards that they were even involved. Hell, imagine what a government could use this for when going to war against it’s own people? Yes, hell.
CCP is an enemy actor and should be treated as such. Their ideals are no more valid than ours. So by default all should be given an equal footing. What happened here is not that.
I get it, if you don't cozy up to China, they'll just ban you and rip your product off. Seems like that's preferable to spinelessness.
In all seriousness, this is ridiculous. I hope this makes people understand how frighteningly China is intertwined with our corporations and culture.
The cowardice and hypocrisy of US corporations, especially on the background of them pretending to uphold higher values, is astonishing. Good thing it's being revealed so clearly and overwhelmingly. They only understand money - so whoever ever paid them money or intends to - should take note.
"Every voice MATTERS Great ideas can come from anywhere. Blizzard Entertainment is what it is today because of the voices of our players"
Maybe time for an update?
Edit: They have a statue in front of their office: https://i.imgur.com/5PJxrZr.jpg
Laff.
But I do care deeply about freedom of speech, and I'm getting tired of this crap.
Freedom of speech does not protect you form the consequences of your actions.
The Chinese government can unilaterally shut them down while people in the U.S. need to organize and lobby and fight to get change, and then when change finally happens, it’s only half-baked.
I’m not saying an autocratic government is better, just making an observation.
I think in tough situations, self-preservation tends to take priority over ideals, so I am not surprised to see a business demonstrate double standards or inconsistencies when they're pulled into a situation that could threaten their well being.
Many people make up a company and one person's actions should not put everyone else under threat because that individual's beliefs is not representative of everyone else working there.
The actions of the competitor could have threatened many people's jobs, families, and lives so you can't blame blizzard for doing what they did.
The underlying problem is the Chinese government and how they black list businesses for not following their draconian policies to do business within the country.
Mentioning a solution like having businesses collectively boycott China just doesn't seem well thought. You can't just walk away from half of your market over personal beliefs, and another company within China would jump for joy at the chance to grab that lost market share.
The point I'm making is I think we should focus on the cause for all of this which is the Chinese gov rather than blaming someone or a company who has a gun pointed at them for acting in their own best interest rather than what is right. We're not the ones being threatened so it's really easy to call people cowards.
You have an odd definition of "not getting involved"...
Dollars before principles.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/alibaba-shopping-s...
But I can't help but feel that a sports competition may not be the right place for political activism. Especially seeing as the rules states it won't be accepted.
If Blizzard did not suspend him they would jeopardize all of their rules, and I hope they would have done the same if he was shouting something pro-China.
In both cases while on a base human level it FEELS wrong, if you follow the $$ end of the day the broadcast is the product they're selling to advertisers. Adding any sort of political/divisive messaging could be easily kill those deals - makes sense given the finances. You're attacking their primary income stream, of course they're gonna come at you hard.
The player is not owed any platform by participating in this Blizzard event. If they banned him for comments made on his own social media outside of the event it would be a different story.
To be clear I'm not defending Blizzard, just explaining why most broadcast orgs will react similarly.
It is what it is, until the advertising based model of entertainment changes it'll continue to be this way.
Blizzard: As a result of this action, you have lost my business. I've been a loyal customer, but this behavior is unacceptable.
>> 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...
It says : "Blizzard is a commercial entity and it doesn't want to be involved in anything else than gaming".
For me Blizzard acts in a very corporate way. There's nothing wrong with that, provided you accept the corporate way is the good way.
If you think Blizzard's action is wrong, then just don't abide to their rules.
Blizzard has no moral, it's a commercial entity and it makes whatever compromise needed to expand its commercial activities.
Let's talk about that on the next tournament, just to see how the rules have been updated.
(try to express political opinion inside Disneyworld, just for fun)
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.
Anyway, I don't need to know because won't play it anymore.
I have NEVER seen a "core value" that takes precedence over the almighty dollar at the end of the day. It's not a core value if you uphold it only when it also conveniently aligns with making money. The thing that make values, well, values, is that you're willing to uphold them even when (or, more correctly, especially when) it's difficult.
This is such a transparent example of cozying up to an authoritarian regime for profit purposes, I'm really wondering how all the Blizzard employees with Western-style values are reacting to this.
> 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
how poetic
And in addition to chilling investment in/from China it's giving India and Vietnam an opportunity to get footholds in manufacturing, weakening the sector that was central to making China such a powerhouse to begin with.
There needs to be a law to prevent corporations from enforcing political censorship on behalf of another nation.
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
Really seems like a win win scenario.
Are we going to keep trampling on all our freedoms in the name of ... freedom(?) and then blame it all on China?
EDIT: I knew some people were going to try to spin it into something it wasn't.
I'm not siding with CCP, but my issue is I'm not sure I can side with the protestors either. Because
1. Does the protestors representing the majority of citizens? If yes at this stage why the working class in Hong Kong hasn't started long term strike yet? I would imagine that the most effective non violence method of protesting by citizens would be stop working. That would for one stop the tax flow to the government.
2. Is it necessary for protestors to be violent against pro-China civilians/properties? I'm aware that the protestors have been subject to violence from both police and mobs alike, but fighting for democracy should be a higher cause than revenge? Aren't they fight for freedom of speech among others? Or it's just freedom for themselves and violence and totalitarianism for who else disagrees? [1]
Again I love freedom to the point I've spent many years fighting it for myself and helped a few people. I support Taiwan to be an independent country. But we all know many bad things have been committed under the name of freedom as well. Now I'm not sure if the Hong Kong protestors are fighting under the name of freedom to actually express their hatred toward mainlanders? Thanks for reading and hope my questions would not offend anyone. Just would like to understand the situation better.
Also I'd like to suggest for whoever suggesting going to war with China first consider asking your government to grant full citizenship, permanent residency, or unconditional asylum to Hong Kong permanent residents who wants it.
Edit: would like to hear some thoughts when you downvote.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GR88q8pIw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYuGYLesx0 (the planting of CCP flag near the end is really distasteful for me)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFb2chXt9k
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3031906... (trashing trains while passengers still inside)
(Toby Guu is a Canadian software developer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Jgp7-tXfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFwGqF3QlVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcw7lcZA7SE
What do you think Blizzard would do if some guy wore a MAGA hat in an official stream?
It all started a few months ago when someone committed a crime in Taiwan and fled to Hong Kong. To prevent HK from becoming a safe haven for criminals, the Chief Executive of HK proposed a new law to facilitate extradition of these crime suspects from HK to various jurisdictions in the region, including Taiwan and mainland China.
The proposed law even explicitly stated that it's not applicably to crimes political in nature. But some HK people were nevertheless concerned that it might be abused by China to target political dissidents in HK.
So they have taken to the streets to protest that law. As a result, the law was quickly suspended before it had a chance to pass, and a few weeks ago the HK Chief Executive officially announced the withdrawal of the law.
However, despite the concession from the HK government, the protesters pressed on, demanding four more concessions from the government, chief among them universal suffrage, or the direct election of the HK Chief Executive, who up to this point have been nominated from a narrow pool of Beijing-approved candidates, then voted on by a committee.
It's not entirely clear that China even had anything to do with the proposal of the law which started this ordeal. But the protesters have been shrewd to paint a picture, to great effect, of big bad China stomping on the poor helpless people of HK.
What I cannot stress enough, is the rampant violence and destruction from these protesters, which has done this great city, and many innocent citizens, unimaginable harm. Feel free to support their peaceful protests, but please don't simply pile on and encourage these violence and destruction.
(EDIT: If anything I said is untrue, please correct me. Use the truth to argue your side, don't be a coward and hide behind your downvote.)