They seem pretty comparable to me.
Because I was not a right-wing neo-nazi.
Wonder where this goes this time.
In a democratic society, the people voices are heard.
In a dictatorship, only the small elite that controls the government's voice is heard.
It's not hypocritical for someone to believe that Cloudflare should kick nazis off their service and at the same time believe Blizzard should stand up to China.
Human beings are capable of exercising nuance and understanding complex topics. I don't want to generally go around punching or kicking people, but if I'm cornered and someone is trying to do harm to me, I'm going to fight back. It's the context around such actiona that defines whether or not it was just.
It was a post-game interview on a Blizzard event in a Blizzard broadcast. How is that different from "a private company not wanting to host <content>" ? The player had supported HK freedom on his Twitter in the past, yet was allowed to play in the tournament. Gaming events have not been places for sharing political ideas, like social media is.
The situation is entirely driven by Blizzard, for fear of their potential revenue stream out of China.
This is in contrast to the NBA scenario, where China did speak out against the NBA, and later began to cancel contracts.
That they chose to toe the party line on their own, without prompting from the Chinese government, with swift and overwhelming penalties on the player and shoutcasters doesn't exactly speak well for Blizzard.
If I demonstrate to you that I'm going to shoot your legs if you don't tell me I'm pretty by doing so to people around you, and then I walk up to you and you tell me I'm pretty, would it be accurate to say you chose to tell me I'm pretty all on your own, totally unprompted? Can I say that you chose on your own merely for a potential future in walking? Hey, you won't be killed by the loss of your legs.
Why would China treat the (comparatively huge and influential) NBA one way, and (comparatively tiny) Blizzard another?
Activision Blizzard is in no risk of going bankrupt even if they lose the entire Chinese market.
We've seen this all before with the "terrorist" label, the "communist" label in Hollywood blacklists, various Puritan attempts at censorship for sex, films, music, etc.
I wished I believed this much in our centralize opaque institutions to create these red lines consistently, reliably, and fairly. Which is amusing because much of the people pushing for this the hardest are often the same people who would never hand over such power in almost any other scenario.
The only reliable outcome, that we've seen repeatedly over and over in history is that once you start expanding censorship beyond just the obviously bad-guys (spam, violence, etc) and start wadding into the grey areas of speech is that:
a) context and intention, which are critical in day-to-day discourse, are increasing ignored as the system scales and the scope increases
b) the line will only keep expanding into a broader and broader group ("you did it for x, why not y?!!")
c) false positives dramatically increase
d) due process is only afforded in rare situations where the individual is already famous/powerful and can stir up enough controversy forcing the gatekeepers to actually consider it carefully
Everything goes great at the beginning as you sweep up the low hanging fruit. It's the long run where this 'solution' really gets tested - which is the phase we're now entering on many platforms.