Hacker News Reader

Comment by gameswithgo | Hacker News Reader

Corporations being tone deaf is a regular thing, but the evoking of "Every Voice Matters" so often after shutting down, and punishing, champions of their tournaments (it has happened twice! remember) for supporting a good cause is of historic levels.

Many people seem to think you can't be professional and allow things like this, but you absolutely can. You can let someone who wins a tournament have a few seconds to say something personal, we see this all the time in sports. Lance Armstrong was allowed to lie while disparaging all of the people who were correctly accusing him, Peter Sagan was allowed to make a wonderful political message.

When sports bodies crack down on this in the name of 'professionalism', history does not judge them kindly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salu...

View on HN

It's the difference between a Walmart, which everyone expects to be pretty low ethically, and Blizzard, which has been using things like LGBT in their marketing (showing their lead Overwatch character as gay [outside of China at least]).

You can't have it both ways. You're either progressive in marketing and action, or you're a hypocrite and deserve the market's backlash when you show your greed over ethics. It's why Lebron got pummeled so hard for his HK remarks.

If a streamer had said something, for example, anti-LGBT, Blizzard would have shut them down the same way and everyone would be applauding.

Depending on your personal politics, any given corporate action is either 'brave, standing up for principles' or 'obviously a sellout to the corrupt bad guys'.

That's consitent with parent's point. The act of shutting down is very often a political act claiming no politics is allowed is hypocritical.

Yes bad ideas are criticized and good ideas are celebrated. That's the way it's supposed to be.

Its obvious what is good and bad here. But do some roleplay; Its 15th century CE, and you (and all the people) have been conditioned since your childhood that the christian god is one true god and that the christian god is good.

Now if a person declares something "blasphemous", everyone will think that the person is on the "bad" side.

Setting a precedence lead to ugly slippery slopes and keeping to the absolutes in the guidelines is generally more inclusive.

"If they had done something good instead of bad, I bet you'd be cheering them on!"

Yes, brilliant catch there, you really got us.

'Good' and 'bad' in your sentence are subjective. Millions of mainland Chinese Blizzard customers feel differently on the HK issue than you do.

You can think that they're totally, obviously wrong, but that's politics.

There is a difference between saying 'Freedom for X people' and 'X people are retarded' that has nothing to do with a subjective feeling of 'bad' or 'good'.

There’s also a difference between saying “freedom is great” and “violent separatism is great,” even though both phrases could be used by different people to refer to the same situation.

And if someone actually calls for violence against someone else, then this would also be a different matter.

Saying: "I want people to just get along together" doesn't imply that one group should be murdered for that to happen.

Are you not aware of the violent protests in Hong Kong?

No, it's about (being consistent with one's own) morality.

You're arguing this in a Western, liberal website. You're fighting a losing battle. They know what you mean, they simply disagree.

Millions of Chinese are wrong on this topic.

Arrogance.

https://i.imgur.com/ohchNyd.png

> drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,

(https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762)

>driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,

Gets a bit more complicated when you strip away the drunk modifier.

I wonder if the number of deaths due to driving is greater than, equal to, or less than people who were saved due to ambulances or doctors driving fast to the ER.

"Good" and "bad" in general are subjective.

I can subjectively say that Nazis are bad.

I can objectively say that Nazi policies had a deleterious effect on Jewish populations.

Similarly, I can objectively say that Beijing's policies have a deleterious effect on human rights as defined by the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I can subjectively say that the Chinese government is bad.

And given china voted for the declaration of human rights, they are objectively bad under their own measure.

People's Republic of China did not vote for the declaration of human rights, the Republic of China did

Yes.. and your point? The old country didn't vanish so to speak. Things carry forward.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by subjective.

I assert that, for many (though possibly not all) moral questions, that there is a fact of the matter as to whether a thing is good or bad or neither.

I think it's instructive to realize that mainland Chinese people are being fed state propaganda about "rioters" destroying HK and demanding independence, thus their opinions should be weighted lesser on the issue accordingly.

The sparse examples I've seen of Chinese people actually being exposed to the reality in HK and being surprised, tells me the state media is being effective in its Ministry of Truth role.

Honest question: have you personally seen the "propaganda" of the other side? If you've only seen one side, how are you so completely sure you know which one is right?

As a general rule, if millions of people are upset enough about something to take to the streets and risk being injured or killed by the police, it's a pretty safe bet that something in their government is fucked and in need of fixing.

If you apply this consistently, you should also be sure that Brexiteers, the yellow vest protestors, and the Catalonian independent movement show that European government is fucked. (If you do, I respect that, but if you don't, consider why you think some mass anti-government protests are more sympathetic than others.)

Are you asserting Brexit isn't a massive failure of the British Government? They punted a critical and complex problem to the citizenry, and then advertised outright lies as benefits, and even many British people now recognize they were in no position to make a meaningful judgement of that issue and vote on it.

I don't know what the yellow vest protest is.

Catalonian independence is something I agree with. They've been exploited extremely hard by Spain more or less since they lost their autonomy.

>you should also be sure that Brexiteers, the yellow vest protestors, and the Catalonian independent movement show that European government is fucked.

That's exactly what they show.

Whether these groups favored solutions to the fuck-ness are the correct solutions totally tangential to that. When people take to the streets something ain't right.

> Whether these groups favored solutions to the fuck-ness are the correct solutions totally tangential to that. When people take to the streets something ain't right.

This, exactly. It takes a lot to get people to resort to civil unrest. I wish it was respected as being that, the last resort of a populace losing faith in it's leadership, and not derided as it is so often as just people who disagree with something. Protests should be a sign of not just disagreement but profound disgust not just for what is being done, but for the processes and the system that permitted it to happen in the first place.

Are you implying that brexit protesters were in being injured and/or killed by the police?

Zero people have been killed by the police in the current Hong Kong protests, as far as we know.

Probably why I used the words risk and injured.

Many protestors have been disappeared by imprisonment, and presumably shipped off to the mainland. Quite plausible a number of them have died, and this fact is being hidden because it would cause global outrage. China has historically been secretive about their extensive use of political and ethnic prisons and their use of prisoners for organ harvesting.

Body of a 15 year old female protestor was found floating naked in the sea. Many speculate she was raped and killed by police.

We do have evidence of torture: HK police (or mainland military acting as such) posing with an individual in a 'tiger chair' and mocking their suffering.

And how many millions of people are disturbed by those protests?

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dpn9oy/man_gets_p...

I for one don't weigh issues like this by the number of people who are on side X, I weigh individual people by the positions they take on such issues.

The one counter example by sibling commenter with the abuse protestors get is reprehensible. How do things like that not outweigh whatever minor inconveniences of disturbance are happening for the people you mention?

I used the word sparse deliberately: I have only seen two news reports involving mainland Chinese citizens visting Hong Kong and commenting on their observations.

Both were surprised, almost shocked, that the rioting, damage to public and private buildings, and constant street fighting, with deaths on both sides,that they had heard about was completely untrue.

Both seemed to want to temper their comments but still were very surprised that the story they had been told was so different from the things they saw in person.

To get a even more generic, but to what extent is all of our social morals based on the information society provides us? In 200 years, what will modern society then look back on us and condemn us for buying into the propaganda on issues that, if they were mentioned right now, would be seen as clearly having a right/wrong choice that is not influenced by propaganda?

there's a ton of chicom types like carl_zha still on twitter that you can check out as it's obvious you haven't looked into this issue at all

I will admit I haven't gone researching for attitudes of people from the rest of China, and I'm rarely on any social media sites, so I haven't seen much except whats been posted in a couple of channels from a very few people in Hong Kong.

My two points of data involving Chinese residents visiting HK and commenting on the difference between the media stories they had heard, and what they experienced in HK personally, were the basis of my comment.

I am certainly aware that there are about 7 billion different opinions about this topic.

Sure, it's politics.

As for it being subjective, does that matter? Millions of people are also racist and feel racism -- their racism, anyway -- is A-okay. That doesn't make racism somehow less bad, just because it's technically subjective and some people are fine with it.

HK protestors are for democracy, which is good. The PRC is opposed to democracy, which is bad.

> HK protestors are for democracy, which is good. The PRC is opposed to democracy, which is bad.

Come on, you should know that the ability to distill complicated issues into slogans is orthogonal to truth.

"Abortion clinic bombers are for life, which is good. Abortion doctors are opposed to life, which is bad."

It's almost like some issues are more complicated and nuanced than others.

I don't need to constantly wring my hands about declaring Nazis to be evil asshats, just because they were humans with varying motivations or whatever.

More insightful and deeper analysis may be warranted at times, to be sure, but summarizing them as genocidal, evil maniacs isn't wrong in the least.

Mainland Chinese customers cannot have a real opinion about anything as they are fed with constant lies and propaganda from a single source of information.

Honest question: have you personally seen the "propaganda" of the other side? If you've only seen one side, how are you so completely sure you know which one is right?

I have. Like how their government lies about the air quality index, but when you check the index as generated by any other country's embassy you get a much higher number. How the people are taught that smog and unhealthy air is normal, and are afraid to talk about it if you bring it up. Or how major world events don't hit the papers, and if they do are given massive spin. Or how huge swaths of the internet are blocked. I used to live on an international floor in college, and when one of the Chinese students came here and went to the library, he said he read Chinese history and cried because it was so much different from what he'd be taught.

Yes. Calling HK protestors 'cockroaches' to dehumanize them is a common refrain, along with calls to 'squash' them.

The wumao '50 sent army' is active on twitter, in both Chinese and English.

Check out the recent Catalonia thread on HN, and tell me if mainlander rhetoric differs all that much from that of a couple of the Spanish posters in it.

I don't accuse said posters of being members of a 50 peso army. I assume that their (nationalistic) opinions are just that.

You should extend these same assumptions to China.

Yeah the truth is hard to access if you can't read in both languages. Though if I had to bet, I'd pick the side that didn't firewall most of the internet.

What makes you think that? Do you have evidence of that?

Allocation of public funds is politics. Tax rates are politics. There are tons of topics that are differing opinions about things, these are politics.

The right of LGBTQ people to exist is not politics, that's human rights. The people who support this are good and right, and the people who oppose it are bad and wrong.

If you don't want to be bad and wrong, don't hold those beliefs. It's very simple, really.

"Human rights" are guaranteed by the government unfortunately, because with a monopoly on violence they are the only entity legally able to enforce them. Human rights are politics.

The language here of "exist" is, I think, a bit of a rhetorical trick which doesn't argue the actual thing under contention.

That's not to say that there aren't good and convincing actual arguments, I just don't think this is one of them.

Look, I'm on your side on this issue, but to say that LGBTQ lack the right "to exist" is liberal hyperbole that ends up being excellent ammunition for smart pundits like Ben Shapiro to rip apart. We gotta be more precise in our language than that.

I don't think it's hyperbolic at all. LGBTQ people should be able to exist in our society the same as straight people. Anything short of that is discrimination and should be called out.

And I don't give a shit what gives grifters like Ben Shapiro "ammunition." He's proven well versed in turning literally anything into ammunition for his bad faith arguments. People like him do not need to be "beaten," they need to be ignored.

I didn't think this was about what the player said, but instead about Blizzard leveraging their influence to shut someone up. I think that'd be wrong even if the player had said something "bad".

Now that I think about it, for most people it seems to simply be an issue of good vs bad.

Maybe I expected too much of them.

It wasn't just Activision-Blizzard banning Blitzchung and confiscating his prize money. The official Hearthstone account on Weibo also parroted the Chinese government party line, "We will, as always, resolutely safeguard the country’s dignity" in Chinese.

Is that really bad, though?

Like if they said, in America, "Of course, USA #1, never forget 9/11, freedom baby", that would just be more boilerplate pandering and not really political.

Is the level of hostility that high that even such sweet nothings are treason?

You don't even need concepts of good or bad to make this argument. This is just consistent with Blizzard's already political messaging. They are supporting LGBT rights, of course, they would be anti-anti-LGBT

Except in China. Which shows that in reality they are pro-money and any bias toward or against groups like LGBT is only when it helps their bottom line.

Is it possible to want to work in China without merely being pro money?

I keep hearing that greed is the ultimate motivation, but if you want to work within China for any reason you must follow the governments ethical guidelines.

For some people within Blizzard, they want to work within China because it is their country or their ancestoral heritage.

"If I punch a knife-wielding maniac, I'm a hero, but if I punch a baby I go to prison. People are so hypocritical about punching!"

The point is that there is political messaging that Blizzard is ok with, and political messaging that Blizzard isn't ok with. If you were a Polish streamer and made a comment pro-LGBT, that would absolutely be political in Poland because of the currently ruling right wing party that has called LGBT movement and "gender philosophy" a "cancer" and "rainbow disease" many times - but Blizzard would almost certainly allow it because it alligns with the political views that they are ok pushing. But then as we saw with Hong Kong, there are other political stances that Blizzard heavily punishes, and that's not ok.

I feel blizzard wouldn't really give a damn if you said "sodomites should be illegal stop the gender agenda!" either.

The only issue they saw was displeasing the CCP, it's blatantly obvious.

They probably wouldn't be ok with it. But they also probably wouldn't claw back winnings. That person would just find themselves uninvited in the future.

Part of this fiasco is how blatantly it is implementing a government's crackdown on speech.

It matters what the actual political content is, yes.

You're pulling this moral relativism play. The point is that Blizzard is an American company, with a largely liberal employee base and has explicitly shown support for certain causes.

They should take a stand. You can't please everyone, so it might as well be those with the right values. And people who think that Muslims should be interred or that HK should cede all political freedom are wrong.

>so it might as well be those with the right values.

By 'right', you mean of course YOUR right.

You can't please everybody, so you should please ME.

Yes! What values do you hold? Aren't you disappointed when an organization goes against them? Much less, when they have previously stated they agree with you?

Fascism and the removal of political freedom should not be taken lightly. This should not be controversial.

> with a largely liberal employee base

Corporations are chartered to act on behalf of the interests of their shareholders, not, insofar as the two groups are different, their employees.

1) Corporations and their boards are not blood-bound to do everything in their power to maximize value. They can act ethically, and it is easily (and morally) defensible that acting with values is in the long term interest of the company.

2) The article specifically references employees, so I also added that angle.

> Corporations and their boards are not blood-bound to do everything in their power to maximize value. They can act ethically, and it is easily (and morally) defensible that acting with values is in the long term interest of the company.

Sure, but literally anything can be “acting with values”, depending on the value system chosen. There's no particular reason that would be determined by the political preferences of employees. It would be more natural for a corporation interested in sacrificing near term returns for some kind of ethics to do so based on the shareholders preferences than employers (or, if the gesture at ethics was intended as a long term business health approach, to do so based on what it was expected potential future customers would respond well to in the corporate story.)

This is a myth. There is no fiduciary duty to maximize profits. There is the duty of loyalty, which mostly means you can't embezzle from the company, and there is duty of care, which means you can't do anything grossly incompetent that ends up harming the company. Duty of care is a VERY high bar (e.g. neglect safety standards and end up shopping e coli tainted food) and is nowhere close to being able to justify the "shareholder primacy" idealogy parroted by conservative think-tanks.

Yeah that's why you need to be able to distinguish between the morality of supporting a democratic movement and shitting on a vulnerable minority. This is not hard.

Hate towards people should not be tolerated. Comments criticizing a person or group of people should not be allowed.

Comments criticizing corporate or governmental entities should be encouraged.

Well yeah, because being pro-LGBT is one of their explicitly stated principles. If they act according to their stated principles, why would there be an outrage.

But if they go against their stated principles, like "oh yeah, let's erase all traces of our pro-LGBT stances we care sooo much about in games for Chinese and Russian markets, because uuuuuuuuh... reasons", you bet people would get upset.

Do people really expect blizzard to be ethically positive? At least among my friends (which admitted skews toward hacker types) Blizzard is notorious for being for the game industry what the RIAA or MPAA is for the music industry. The company has sued 3rd party implementations of games network protocols and engines, even when no assets were distributed. They even tried to sue Valve over DOTA 2. And to top it off now they've pivoted to a loot boxes monetization model.

Blizzard are the Apple of the gaming industry. They can pretty much get away with anything because the people that like them REALLY like them and those that don't are just not very interested. And due to this they can get away with some really, really shitty things, and have done.

But this particular event may be their reckoning.

=3= Mmmm, Nintendo's more "the Apple of the gaming industry". Super-closed, walled garden ecosystem, stubbornly oblivious of and draconianly IP-protective in response to online phenomena of game streaming (to the frustration of their more aware American branch), etc.

Also, did any computing company eventually turn their products into slot machines? Because Konami would be the THEM of the gaming industry: https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/12/20911313/silent-hill-slot...

The vibe I get from the Nintendo direct showcase is at least straightforward and honest. You have some middle aged businessman in a suit who clearly doesn't play any video games. They shove game after game at you without too much fluff or politics. They don't explicitly say this but in my head I hear, "We want to sell a shit ton of games and make a ton of money from you, look at this game, this game and this game! Oh we aren't done check out nostalgia game 1 and 2!!"

I find that sort of honesty refreshing when companies like Blizzard, appear to champion social causes in order to gain a mass following to sell games, rather than sell a good solid game without the political fluff piped in.

I agree. I like Nintendo as a brand more than I like Blizzard as a brand. I don't like that I have to buy their hardware, but I do appreciate that they keep producing quality content.

(I do wish they'd left the old Wii online stores open, but that's another issue.)

What does =3= mean?

Pursing lips while thinking???

(Given the hmmm after)

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=rick+morty+lips

If you're fooled by a company acting virtuous, sure.

> They even tried to sue Valve over DOTA 2

Didn't DOTA start as Starcraft mod or something? I don't know what the legal status of mod/spinoffs is. Could I sell my own Mario fanhack game?

DOTA started as a Warcraft mod, which used Warcraft characters. The suit resulted in some characters being changed to be less similar to the original Warcraft heroes (e.g. Leoric -> Skeleton King -> Wraith King).

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that "you cannot use our game world / universe" in your game? Valve and Blizzard came to a pretty reasonable arrangement.

AFAIK Skeleking -> Wraith king was a purely -China- ceremonial thing

AFAIK Skeleking -> Wraith king was a purely -China- ceremonial thing

Yes, the "pressing ceremonial reasons".

>I don't know what the legal status of mod/spinoffs is.

No one did. Blizzard's failed lawsuit established precedent. Now we know.

>Could I sell my own Mario fanhack game?

If you are using any assets from the original without permisison, or any copyrighted names/characters, no.

Thats where we need people to have a conduit of accountability for the double standard. My ethnicity and sexual orientation is not their marketing soundbyte.

Exactly. What this should reveal to us is that the "wokeness" of corporations is mostly disputable. Yes, they sense the winds of change, etc., but look a bit more closely and you see that it's often cynically adopting the language of the majority culture to garner broad appeal, not real ethics at work.

So let me understand what you’re saying: Blizzard should not try to be inclusive or otherwise progressive because they are not always? I think we should acknowledge that companies try to abide by the norms of their market and that their main concern has always been to make money. Them displaying any kind of opinion is just a byproduct.

Blizzard should try to be inclusive, but consumers should realize that their progressivism is rooted in cynical self-serving greed much more than a sincere desire to improve the world.

Marketing != ethics

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/tracer-is-infa...

>It's the difference between a Walmart, which everyone expects to be pretty low ethically, and Blizzard,

The only ethics corporations have are making sure their share holders maximize profit as much as possible, any other ethics they pretend to have exists because they think it will lead to that or they're forced to. Corporations are mandated to do this. If it's a choice between ethics and shareholder profits for a corporation, the latter will always come first because that's why corporations exist. Corporations never have and never will have ethics as long as they exist in their current form where their entire purpose is maximizing profits. I have no idea why people seem to forget this these days.

One reason is that it's not true. Corporations are limited in their ability to say "screw the shareholders", but they aren't required to be unethical whenever they stand to make a profit from it.

Even apart from that, it just seems like an overly reductionist perspective. Why couldn't an honest commitment to act ethically help the bottom line?

>Why couldn't an honest commitment to act ethically help the bottom line?

Well if it did you'd think corporations would act ethically, whereas reality says otherwise and they don't unless forced by government or public pressure. The world's totally fucked right now because of corporate greed.

Every day I read a new story about how some corporation is acting completely and utterly unethically. It

https://www.hoover.org/research/what-purpose-corporation

>There are two levels of corporate duties to shareholders. First, corporate boards and officers deal at arm’s length with outsiders, and here, their responsibility is governed by the so-called business judgment rule, which protects them against suits by shareholders so long as they follow appropriate procedures in reaching a decision and act in good faith to maximize shareholder value. This rule both constrains corporate insiders but also protects them from liability if their good faith efforts turn out less well financially than expected. Indeed, if officers had to make good on every loss that occurs when deals go sour, no one would take on such roles. And second, whenever corporate officials enter into any kind of self-dealing transaction, the standard of care is much higher, given the conflict of interest. For such transactions, insiders must analyze whether corporate shareholders received “fair value” from the transaction.

I'm not sure I understand the response. Certainly many corporations do behave unethically, but I don't see why that means we should never believe any company will be ethical.

Why should I trust entities that regularly prove they give zero fucks about anything other than the bottom line? Why should I give them the benefit of the doubt? That's like believing an abusive spouse will change.

Corporations regularly flout environmental protection laws, they regularly flout human rights, they spy on us, they do skirt any and all laws they can, they abuse tax systems, they're responsible for large environmental disasters and end up throwing money at things to make everyone shut up about it, they lobby governments to get laws changed in their favour, they exploit children and impoverished people, they go after drinking water, healthcare and the basic necessities of a modern civilization in search of more profit at the expense.of people. Fuck corporations.

There is no legal doctrine for corporations to maximize profits. This is largely think-tank idealogy that has successfully won over the public mind. "Legal or moral duty to maximize profits" was a rarely uttered phrase in the 60s and one would hardly call the United States "not as capitalist" back then.

Blizzard has done a crazy amount of virtue signaling over the past few years. It should have been obvious to most that this was just marketing to get people to buy their stuff, but it seems to work on a ton of people. You may or may not be surprised to know that they backtrack on a lot of their progressiveness in the Chinese market such as various characters being of certain sexualities.

The sooner that people learn that almost every company ever is only out to make money and is not your friend the better. This has been a more difficult realization for some due to it being a video game company.

I don't think awareness that corporations are out for profit and not your friend is incompatible with pushing back on corporations who are curating an image of support for certain causes and are then acting in ways at odds with that image. In fact, I think it is necessary in order to understand how to push back. They are not your friend so they don't care about your disappointment, but they are out for profit so they do care about the things you can do to affect that: personally boycotting, organizing boycotts, spreading bad word of mouth, etc.

Maybe your perspective is that corporations shouldn't do this image curation thing, and yeah maybe so, but in a world where they do, it absolutely makes sense for individuals to push back on them when they are then hypocritical. Otherwise they get the benefits of standing for causes without taking on the risks inherent in doing so.

But, a business does not make decisions. The people of that organization make the decisions. We must pierce the veil and hold the individuals accountable. Start picketing their house, where they eat, everywhere they go.

The folks that care should really be taking lessons from the anti-abortion people picket outside of a physicians home.

> Start picketing their house, where they eat, everywhere they go.

Certainly you will be the first to take time out of your day to do this....

>The folks that care should really be

Key words there.

Eh... buisnesses are not just collections of people acting in a vacuum, though. The structure of the business drives certain decisions. I'm not saying it's a hive-mind, but pretending a business is just a bunch of individuals is too reductionist.

Also, since ActiBlizz is a publicly traded corporation, there are people in that organization that are legally or contractually obligated to make decisions in the best interest of ActiBlizz.

>The structure of the business drives certain decisions. I'm not saying it's a hive-mind, but pretending a business is just a bunch of individuals is too reductionist. Also, since ActiBlizz is a publicly traded corporation, there are people in that organization that are legally or contractually obligated to make decisions in the best interest of ActiBlizz.

Sure, but at the same time executives in these organizations do have power. Twitter just walked away from that sweet political ad money for ethical reasons, for example. You just have to find the correct arms to twist.

For not allowing a comment on their platform? Really?

Go boycott the company. Make sure to make it clear that bad actions will have consequences. But please, do not go bully random people.

>For not allowing a comment on their platform? Really?

Huh, I thought it was obvious to folks as to what people are upset about. It's not about preventing a comment on their platform.

And of course they can limit whatever comments they like. I suspect blizz_ack would also not want racist, or other discriminatory language, displayed on their platform.

>Go boycott the company. Make sure to make it clear that bad actions will have consequences.

It won't work. To make a dent in a company of that size, a significant portion of their user base would need to cease buying products. That simply won't happen.

>But please, do not go bully random people.

Oh please..these are far from random people. There is no place on this Earth for folks that place greed over the greater good of the people.

>Start picketing their house, where they eat, everywhere they go.

This sounds so obnoxious and short-sighted.

If I own a business that doesn't align with your values, it's one thing to boycott and protest my business. It's another thing to follow me around to a restaurant, dentist, or park to protest my business decisions. You're disturbing the enjoyment of those places for other people who might have nothing to do with my decisions. I suppose spouses, children and even extended family should have to endure this as well?

>This sounds so obnoxious and short-sighted.

The intent is to be obnoxious. But I'm not seeing how it's short sighted.

>If I own a business that doesn't align with your values, it's one thing to boycott and protest my business. It's another thing to follow me around to a restaurant, dentist, or park to protest my business decisions.

The size of the organization matters. It's much easier to completely shutdown "Dave's Coffee Shop" after they find out Dave supports the KKK. But to seriously impact a multi-billion dollar company with millions of users would require a large coordinated effort....which is unlikely to occur. So as we've seen in the past, status quo will be maintained.

>You're disturbing the enjoyment of those places for other people who might have nothing to do with my decisions. I suppose spouses, children and even extended family should have to endure this as well?

If we want results, we must exploit people's weaknesses. You want it to stop? Stop the decisions people are unhappy with. No is forcing these executives to work. Don't like what you're being subjected, and you don't have the power to change it? Then quit!

It's short-sighted because breaking of mos maiorum for YOUR immediate political gains is how you legitimize the actions of the psychopaths who will break it further for THEIR gains 10 years down the line.

Eventually this process gets you to the Saturninuses of your world and the streets run with blood. You, who did not appreciate history, has just repeated it.

Depends. Do the ramifications of your business values follow me around to a restaurant, dentist, or park? Do they affect my family? If yes then yeah, people should be able to ensure the ramifications of them follow you there too.

My point is that everyone else, even people who aren't related to me, are now paying the price too.

Take the park example. A group is protesting against my business decisions, so they follow me to the park where I run at 6 every evening. All the other park patrons now have to endure with your protest even though my business has nothing to do with my run at this park. Or the patrons at a restaurant. Or at a sports/concert venue.

You might be protesting me to change my business decision, but other patrons are the collateral damage caught in the cross fire. You might be suffering for what I have done. Why do these other people who are away from my place of work have to as well?

>My point is that everyone else, even people who aren't related to me, are now paying the price too.

Right, but when people picket outside of a building or march down the street in protest....are bystanders there not suffering the same fate? Why is that not acceptable only when it's directed at a person? Do you think picketing outside of a large corporate building has much effect other than an attempt to raise awareness to others?

Virtue signalling only works because people fall for it. So it is really not surprising that it works on a lot of people.

Blizzard was, in fact, consistently following their core principles the entire time. We just got an education on what those principles actually were.

> punishing, champions of their tournaments [...] for supporting a good cause

Which makes this headline framing by the LA Times even more upsetting. I mean, yes, it's a PR disaster, but even in context that's not the important fact to convey here. They're dealing with outrage because of an expressly political act they took, not merely a mistake in the management of "Public Relations".

Taking a political stance is quite literally within the definition of public relations.

Some people would say, if a company sincerely took a political stance, it would encompass the CEO, purchasing, HR, hiring, service delivery, content and so on - rather than only being the purview of the public relations department.

If political stances are taken by the PR/marketing department in isolation, they risk finding the company's actions in contradiction of its words.

Some people might say that.

But those people who know better would say that it is the job of the PR department to coordinate the internal discussions regarding a company's political stance with the appropriate decision makers (which might include the CEO and board but would not include HR, or any of the other departments you've mentioned), and to coordinate the disclosure, dissemination, and followup of said stance once the decision-makers have weighed in.

And yes, in most companies, it is the PR department that determines the company's political stance, not the CEO, because the the people in the PR department have a much better understanding of the consequences, because it's literally their job to understand this stuff. In that respect, they are no different than than Legal or Accounting departments.

And like the Legal and Accounting departments, when it comes to PR issues, the head of PR gets to tell the CEO what to d. (This doesn't mean the CEO will actually do that, see Elon Musk, but at the overwhelming majority of companies the CEO will trust the expert.)

  And yes, in most companies, it is
  the PR department that determines
  the company's political stance

Do you imagine Apple's PR department gets to decide whether Apple's iphone production buys Chinese-made components?

I can assure you, it is not within the power of the PR department to make that decision.

You're also not talking about a PR decision or political stance. You're talking about logistics, which is normally within the purview of the COO.

And yes, now that China is a political issue, you can bet that the PR department is involved in the decision to buy Chinese-made components and the COO will take their advice into strong consideration, since they're the ones that will be explaining the decision to society, and their choice of logistics structure could affect their future logistics mobility.

As a marketer here's the deal. A brand can be "woke" and be socially conscious. When they do that though, and this is where people get tripped up, they're opening themselves up to an incredible amount of scrutiny that most legacy brands frankly aren't prepared to deal with. So as a marketing strategy it works, but it doesn't work as ONLY a marketing strategy. The entire organization has to be aligned on that messaging otherwise someone can and will figure out where you falter and attack you relentlessly for it. It's why it works for someone like allbirds, but blows up in Blizzards face when they grand stand on something like gay rights but then kowtow to Chinese party lines. Another good example is Nike and Kapernick campaign while also using sweatshops in SE Asia. Nothing enrages anyone quite as much as hypocrisy, especially the kind of person that would choose to support a brand based on their social stances.

tl;dr when you posture as a pillar of morality people will call you out if you aren't consistent.

Just to point out: this is true for individuals as well. Standing for any cause or principle has inherent risks. Some people will disagree with your cause or principle and people who agree with it will expect you to be consistent.

I think society has shown that it only works sometimes.

The biggest example in recent history was the kneeling movement in the NFL and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.

Similarly with the NBA, player agents have indicated an overwhelming support by players to NOT speak out for fear of losing their endorsements from Nike, Adidas, Anta, and other firms deeply embedded in the Chinese industrial complex. Even with the Commissioner coming out in favor of voicing the issues, its the big stars the fans care about and without them there will be a significantly fewer repercussions.

> The biggest example in recent history was the kneeling movement in the NFL and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.

Did it? I'm genuinely asking and seeing contradicting results trying to search. At least super bowl stats look like they've lost quite a bit. [anecdata] I know myself I quit watching football as a result of that and the injuries.

Citation needed, since all reporting has said the opposite.

Players want to be able to speak freely. Many of them have started their support for the Hong Kong protests.

Players such as? Lebron James certainly wasn’t for the protests or players supporting them.

Lebron James is a moron. Remember the part of his statement where he claimed that many people had been physically hurt by Morey's words?

Ah today I learned that Lebron James is so big he counts as multiple players.

But seriously, where are the citations that multiple players support censorship, let alone NBA players in general?

Because the reporting on ESPN and CBS Sports is the exact opposite--players may choose the remain apolitical with respect to Hong Kong but want the right to speak out if they choose.

>and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.

We don't know what would have been the result if the NFL had simply ignored the whole thing and let the players peacefully protest. A lot of effort was put forth by the NFL and the president to get people angry about that before they shut it down. Maybe don't do that.

Not sure I'd say the NFL won. If anything their reaction prolonged something that probably would have passed quickly on its own if they had let it play out. In the end they came out of it looking really bad.

The players didn't "win" necessarily, but I'm not sure if there was ever a criteria by which they could have won. The goals of the protest were too diffuse. I guess the main goal was awareness of police violence, but the people that needed to hear it the most immediately pretended it was about something else (the troops, patriotism, etc.).

I think with what's happening in the NBA, the truth is a lot of these "woke" individuals are only woke as long as it doesn't affect their business interests. It is what it is. This isn't a new thing.

Could someone remind me what the second champion punishment was?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com