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Comment by juanjmanfredi | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious as to what happens if the NBA does in fact get banned from China. I've always wondered whether, as the Chinese economy grows and living standards rise, individuals would ever feel more entitled to individual rights. Of course maybe this is just a western bias.

If the NBA was blocked, would passionate Chinese NBA fans (of which there are many) fall in line? Or not?

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I'm always bemused to have to say this, but: nobody likes censorship because they enjoy "falling in line". People everywhere support censorship exactly to the degree that they agree with the censors.

You probably didn't shed a tear when Alex Jones was deplatformed, because he's a scoundrel, and if this really did escalate to a full block of the NBA (which seems unlikely), by that point many Chinese citizens would probably think the same of the NBA.

This. So much this.

Deplatforming is deplatforming. If one supported the deplatforming of Alex Jones, and doesn't also support China on this, then they are a hypocrite engaging in severe cognitive dissonance.

Freedom of speech is not some "loophole" that allows people to say nasty things. It's a bulwark against authoritarianism. The ones who forget that need to study world history when it comes to freedom of speech and expression.

Twitter, Facebook, and any other entity that deplatformed Alex Jones are private companies and can deplatform whoever they want. In fact that is part of their freedom of speech. This is different from government-enforced silencing of speech, which is what is happening in China right now.

I feel no cognitive dissonance, but maybe you can explain more why I should.

NBA are not legally controlled by Chinese laws. They're censoring speech because they want to (a.k.a. it's profitable), not because they're being forced to.

What speech is the NBA censoring? The commissioner came out in favor of free speech. The GM has not been fired.

On the other hand, the Chinese government has stepped in to block the NBA because of the NBAs stance on free speech of players, staff, etc.

If you want to see that sort of cognitive dissonance/hypocrisy on display, just go a few threads over and state:

> "Blizzard Entertainment is a private company and can deplatform whoever they want".

Is "cognitive dissonance/hypocrisy" really the only reason you can think of why someone might support deplatforming Alex Jones, and not the Blizzard streamers in this case?

They might not word it this way, but I think what people really mean is "X is a private company and can deplatform whoever they want with the approval of their users".

I haven't seen anyone saying Blizzard's actions should be illegal. The common response seems to be "boycott", which Alex Jones' supporters were free to do as well

"Twitter, Facebook, and any other entity that deplatformed Alex Jones are private companies and can deplatform whoever they want"

Would you feel the same way if the deplatforming was done by, say, AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile? Because Twitter and Facebook specifically get the same protection as if they are communication pipes (as opposed to being publishers).

Why are you equating private entities deplatformimg vs government-controlled ones? They are fundamentally different things.

There is no effective difference between private and public deplatforming. Freedom of expression is harmed by both.

Perhaps but the harm is vastly different in scale.

Private banning of speech doesn’t prevent the individual from stating those claims elsewhere. Government mandated banning of speech does prevent that speech from being used elsewhere.

Not exactly.

If I don't want someone to speak at my event and ban them, that's not the end of the world. There are probably others who would allow them to speak.

If the government bans someone from speaking, there is no recourse.

This is the state of the world in the USA and one of our cornerstone negative freedoms.

With companies out there that makes more in capital than some countries in a single year, the line between private entities and government is harder to discern.

How do you get a platform when it is the defacto platform?

I agree with your first point. My anecdotal experience of talking to people from China is that there is a very real sense of nationalism that results in deference to the government. The idea is that under this regime the economy has grown strong, and everybody has jobs and food. That is worth the silencing of dissent in a country where mass starvation exists in very recent history. But how long does that last? At some point the people no longer agree with the censors, but the censors likely don't step aside and relinquish power. And to be clear the point at which this happens is probably not losing access to the NBA, but it does exist, and this NBA situation is an interesting barometer.

As I said in a different comment, Alex Jones is not that relevant to this discussion unless somebody can show that the United States government had a role in the deplatforming.

The difference is that the US government didn’t dictate that Jones be removed.

They'd just watch via VPN, if other bans are any indication. Of course not everyone knows how to use a VPN, but the NBA becoming unavailable might be an impetus to figure it out.

I read an article recently that made it seem as if VPN wasn't the panacea for GFW that westerner's think it is. Apparently the GFW throttles encrypted connections heavily outside of normal business hours.

You may have to compromise on either speed or quality, but watching videos is not impossible. FWIW I had the best connection at 4 in the night, when I assume no one else in my apartment complex was still online. (All data 1 year out of data. Maybe everything is different now.)

I was honestly had no problems reading about Tieneman Square on Wikipedia while walking around Tieneman Sqaure last year during National Week. The thing is most of the people who know about this stuff already do and the regular Joe on the street isn't going to put work into it. The people on the ground are a lot of the time patriotic to a fault. It reminded me a lot of the non-questuoning patriotism that permeates midwest America. And honestly I got the idea they desperately want to be America (*with Chinese characteristics;) ).That being said using a VPN only is not the best solution. A suite of software solutions working in concert is a much better route. Certain VPN providers are better than others given their size or implementation but even still the large ones see huge reductions in reliability during patriotic times (i.e. National Week etc). Best to RYO or use a concert of software implementations.

They do. It is a nationalistic rhetoric, much like what we saw here as well. At the end of the day, the legitimacy comes from some kind of populist support. Very unfortunate turn of events.

Yeah I think you are right. But that populist support is not guaranteed forever, and I wonder what happens then.

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