It's a weird day when I find myself agreeing with Marco Rubio. But it's true, China is effectively attempting a global chill on free speech by gating market access. If we don't stand up now, the effects will be felt long into the future.
Apple has tried very hard to appease both sides, and if they suffer for it, it's their own fault.
In this particular situation, I'd say:
- China is wrong to suppress free expression of HKers, and furthermore I believe it's incumbent upon HKers to assert their, as I see it through the lens of my culture, natural born right to that expression.
- Blizzard and the NBA are wrong to discourage the expression of its employees or associates on this particular matter (supporting another culture asserting values like our own), but those harmed do not have the same recourse as a citizen would against their government (with the obvious exceptions of protected classes, which I'm not sure applies here, IANAL). There is only market recourse, aka boycott⁎, or potentially government regulation to protect political speech in the workplace (not sure if that already exists, but it sounds like a dangerous path to me as all kinds of wacky shit could be claimed to be political).
⁎ It strikes me that an embargo or sanction is a kind of political boycott, is that what you'd like to see? Because I'm not outright opposed to a government curtailing business with other governments that refuse to share foundational values. But this is a tricky road too because it basically leads to the kinds of debates like those made to refuse service to PoC or LGBT communities. In the US we have the SCOTUS to help decide those questions, what is the global analogue?
CCP is what is industrializing the country. There's not a single person in the West who is not a recent immigrant that lived in a pre-industrial society. In this case Chinese population supports CCP because between supporting some rich special people in HK protesting something and not going back to working the fields with bare hands, HK protesters lose.
West is ought to understand it.
These are not made up stories. Chinese population remembers about having finally electricity everywhere and moving from working farm fields to maybe getting a job in a factory and not using outhouses. There are over a billion of them.
HK population remembers being a special people with British institutions. There are 7.4 million of them.
Or is it just a matter of "we suffered, so they have to suffer"?
Chinese population (by an overwhelming majority) views HK protesters as rich ungrateful bitches throwing a tempter tantrum.
HK population views mainland Chinese as the unwashed masses that are trying to take away what HK population thinks is rightfully theirs.
The numbers are not on the side of HK. The West is ought to understand that there's HK protesters do not have a winning hand, even with the support from the West.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/sports/adam-silver-nba-ch...
Freedom of speech is what the US Constitution guarantees. It says the government cannot limit people's ability to speak their mind, and cannot punish people for speaking their mind. Note that it says nothing about what private entities can do, especially on platforms they own and operate.
"Free speech", as exercised nowadays (mostly) by conservatives who complain about being "silenced", is the (in my opinion ridiculous) idea that one should be able to say anything they want without any consequences whatsoever, and that they are entitled to any platform they choose to spread that message. These are the same people who advocate for a "marketplace of ideas", but get bent out of shape when that marketplace reacts negatively to their opinions.
In my opinion, we need to rid ourselves of the idea that all ideas are equally valid and deserve equal amounts of airtime and consideration. Furthermore, it is okay to completely dismiss certain ideas on their total lack of merit, and furthermore take (private) action to prevent their spread. For example if I post on this site that "all people of <insert ethnicity> need to be exterminated" it would be completely okay for others here to downvote/flag my post (i.e. "censorship") and for HN to ban me (i.e. "de-platforming").
Conservatives tried this too, recruiting the aid of the government to fight against obscenity, Communism, etc. And they lost that battle in the end.
(I assume you follow FIRE, and know that this problem isn't contained to the "speech is violence" people; there are numerous right-wing attempts at suppression on campus as well.)
As to your second point, FIRE tends to advocate for free speech on campus generally, including private schools. A lot of the right-wing attempts at suppressing speech happen at places like private religious schools (Duquensque and Georgetown are two top posts in the FIRE website). I tend to stop short of that—I think private schools are free to restrict speech in ways public schools are not. But, as I said in my post, attempts to suppress speech have historically been a right wing phenomenon.
What would you call this event? The genocide of ideas (by the righteous)?
Who decides which ideas are invalid or lack merit? Is there a social credit system to value / devalue those with ideas and prevent them from transmitting them?
At what point does it extend from the online world into every day life?
What happens to those people when they can't express themselves online or in real life?
Do you see where I'm going with this?
That said, I think that China's efforts - by using companies as their proxies - are being much more effective.
Absolutely. They’re beating us at our own game and revealing that American values were never freedom and democracy - those are just ways we think are good to make money. If a better system comes along we’re the first to jump on it.
What in the heck are you talking about? No one is jumping ship on these values anytime soon.
The actions of corporations trying to make money in countries that don't share those values are subject to open criticism in the press and wherever one cares to air them. If you want to punish companies that seem to be undermining those values (such as Activision/Blizzard in this case), you remain free to do that.
The backlash against Blizzard is an example of that happening.
Modern communication between individuals relies on the internet. Even the government has acknowledged this, insisting that all of their services are available online.
All spaces for communication on the internet (including elements as low as DNS and hosting) rely on private companies.
Private companies can and do take censorious actions based on values that, at best, are layered upon the values of the country that the company operates in. However, at worst, the company's values need not have any relation to those of the countries they operate in.
Thus, the individual's freedom to express their thoughts relies on their thoughts not being censored by private companies. If one of the many companies that you depend upon for communication decides to not let you express that thought, you are unable to express that thought.
Of course, this applies to the internet and not government-owned meat-space, but government-managed meat-space is not where this communication is occurring. Particularly around the incident in Hong Kong.
Ideally 1A protections would be seen as something of a bare minimum, rather than the highest level of protection people could ever dream of enjoying.
This doesn’t mean much if they don’t use this power and instead publish random bullshit. The western way has never been censorship, it’s been straight up lying.
If anything, it shows just how well freedom and democracy works in America despite how many conflicting ideologies exist in our nation, compared to any other country.
Dunno about you, but I draw the opposite conclusion. The reaction so far has made it clear that a lot of Americans value freedom and democracy, and that they see these corporate actions as unacceptable.
Embargoes are the exception, not the rule, and they are not used as a means to enforce political speech. It'll be a cold day in hell before I try to defend the foreign policy tactics of the United States, but to pretend that a business embargo on a select few countries constitutes something on the order of the Chinese stranglehold on business in their country is just false.
I recommend reading manufacturing consent. Censorship is entirely unnecessary and you hit on the core social mechanism there.
I wonder how that would have gone at the height of McCarthyism.
Spitballing some historical fiction for the admittedly bizarre editorial? There would have been a public hue and cry. The editor who published the opinion piece would have lost their job, heads would have rolled (figuratively, not literally) in the WSJ editorial board.
The person who wrote the editorial would have had a bad time in the public sphere (they still would).
The author of the editorial would almost certainly not have gone to jail or been arrested, tortured, or executed, nor would they have lost their property or business, nor would their family. Nor would the editor who published the editorial.
If the author had been a government employee, they probably would have lost their job. If they were a high-profile public persona (an actor, for example), they probably would have been blacklisted.
But to be clear, that would be the worst of it - even during an extraordinary period of paranoia and fear.
If you believe otherwise, dig up some historical precedent to support the argument.
For the record: I do not think the United States of America is a just country in many regards, but if you're going to complain about injustice, at least get the facts straight.
(Edit: I'm just so puzzled by the bizarre false equivalence on this issue. It's like suggesting that Norway and the United States have the same track record on public healthcare because the Norwegian state health plan stopped covering acupuncture from 1985-1990 (imaginary example). They don't have the same track record, it's not close, slapping some words together on the internet doesn't make it so.)
The public pressure to adopt a particular line was comparable. The consequences for a company or personality not adopting a similar line were, and often still are "tied 100% to the approval or disapproval" which sees someone step down after a foolish quote.
Hundreds were imprisoned during the McCarthy era, so that's not an unreachable stretch either. It's not unthinkable.
To your edit: The equivalence is the equal pressure to conform (to the views of China / the prevailing views of the US), with similar consequences. The main difference is that a US corporation is conforming to an international view - because of that market, along with the speed that pressure can build via the internet.