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Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

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Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#161

Post by jessaustin »

johnday wrote: post #149
tomp wrote: post #142

China is very smart. They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of "hurt feelings" - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes ("hurt Chinese feelings" a.k.a. political censorship). 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

This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

...it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

Saying it didn't make it true. Do us all the favor of a more convincing argument.

Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#162

Post by johnday »

tomp wrote: post #154
johnday wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

Well thank God then that wasn't my argument. What I'm saying is, China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship (edit: in the West).

And no, they aren't. The two things may look superficially similar but Chinese political censorship is much, much older and the process but which it is done hasn't changed in a long time.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#163

Post by Steltek »

rjzzleep wrote: post #157

Have we all forgotten when Mozilla replaced the CTO with a long history of internet freedom work to replace him with a marketing director and the disaster that followed? 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.

Was that the same lover of freedom that campaigned to take away the freedom of others?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#164

Post by hanselot »

zwaps wrote: post #139

Then we have to boycott Hearthstone. While the current case is neither surprising nor substantially important, it is important because of principle. 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…

First they came for Linus. Then they came for Stallman. A week after Stack Exchange fell. And still nobody was willing to say it like it is. Soon the endgame will appear and censorship will be applied directly to thought, as if it isn't already...

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#165

Post by ehnto »

alimbada wrote: post #158

It's a shame but I feel like the majority of gamers won't care. They'll either be ignorant of this or they'll just shrug and continue playing. I boycotted Activision and by proxy Blizzard when Activision acquired them a long time ago but their continuing success shows I'm part of an extremely tiny minority.

What was it about Activision that caused you to boycott them?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#166

Post by hanselot »

johnday wrote: post #149
tomp wrote: post #142

China is very smart. They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of "hurt feelings" - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes ("hurt Chinese feelings" a.k.a. political censorship). 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

This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

baizuo

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#168

Post by bjornsing »

johnday wrote: post #149
tomp wrote: post #142

China is very smart. They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of "hurt feelings" - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes ("hurt Chinese feelings" a.k.a. political censorship). 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

This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

That would be utter nonsense, yes, if it was what the parent claimed. But as I understood the parent it was about enforcement of eastern censorship in the West. I found it a quite interesting observation (relatively unrelated to modern liberal views).

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#169

Post by johnday »

jessaustin wrote: post #161
johnday wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

...it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it. Saying it didn't make it true. Do us all the favor of a more convincing argument. Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California.

You're asking me to defend me disagreeing with the original point - the burden of argument should really be on them, but anyway...

Tiananmen square is an immediate and obvious pick. People who publicly referenced the events of Tiananmen square were not allowed to interact with China on a business level. If Hearthstone had existed back then and the streamer had mentioned Tiananmen square, Blizzard would (I think) have taken exactly the same approach as they did today. There's no co-opting of Western politicking here.

> Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California.

Blizzard is heavily integrated with Tencent in China. The actions they took are to preserve that relationship. Ergo the censorship of China is what we're looking at here - without it this event would not have occurred.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#170

Post by k__ »

tomp wrote: post #154
johnday wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

Well thank God then that wasn't my argument. What I'm saying is, China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship (edit: in the West).

lol, this is basically what the government in 1984 would say.
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