Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments • Hacker News Board

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#331

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #215

It's really hard to tell the difference between what is genuinely offensive and what is not. No easy answers. In this case, maybe there is a relatively simple rule: Supporting democracy must not in itself be regarded as offensive...

> It's really hard to tell the difference between what is genuinely offensive and what is not.

You can't have both "Free Speech" and "You Can't Say Anything Offensive" at the same time, because there is too much overlap. So you have to choose. The US constitution is pretty clear that "Free Speech" is the higher principle.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#332

Post by KaiserPro » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #150

nabla9 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Chinese owners? Chinese Tencent owns 5 percent of Blizzard, if full owner of Riot Games, 48% of Epic Games, 11.5% of Bluehole (Fortnite and PUBG), 5% of Ubisoft. They are also investor in Discord. https://www.pcgamer.com/every-game-company-that-tencent-has-... AMC is fully owned by Chinese. The largest movie theater chain in the United States is fully owned by Chinese. Legendary Entertainment Group is owned…

How about Chinese owners? That’s a tricky one. The “woke” don’t care about all the Saudi money in Uber and WeWork despite that regimes hideous treatment of gays, women, dissidents and so on.

not to mention actual slavery

http://www.rhsansfrontieres.org/en/183-to-see/287-forced-lab...

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#333

Post by johnwheeler » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

One difference between and autocratic government and a democracy is the speed at which decisions can be made, and that’s what Blizzard, Apple, and the NBA are up against when having to choose who to appease.

The Chinese government can unilaterally shut them down while people in the U.S. need to organize and lobby and fight to get change, and then when change finally happens, it’s only half-baked.

I’m not saying an autocratic government is better, just making an observation.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#334

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

Beltiras wrote: post #317

ekianjo wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boycotts usually don't achieve anything (historically most boycotts have had no effect whatsoever), so it's hardly going to be a good solution in the short term. Legal action (if possible, but I doubt so since a private corporation can basically do what they want according to their rules) would be better. The best would be to simply throw a continuous torrent of tweets, videos and articles to ridicule Blizzard and He…

I'm not giving them a red cent. They can be anti-democratic on someone else's dime.

You not giving them money wont hit their bottomline. However, you blaming them online and amplifying other people doing so is more likely to make them feel bad about it.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#335

Post by wincy » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #294

notjustanymike wrote: post #266

I've been boycotting Blizzard for a while now. They made it really easy by releasing nothing good.

They've made it crushingly, erode-absolutely-all-of-their-good-will-and-prestige-as-a-developer-despite-monopolizing-your-childhood-imagination easy. Natural late-stage corporate life cycle, I guess. :,c But they'll keep making EZ $$$ as long as store whales keep buying mounts and pets. :D Tell them to boycott.

I mean they became successful by making Totally Not Warhammer: The Video Game and Totally Not Warhammer 40K. And I’m pretty sure those people are long since gone away from the company. Companies are like the Ship of Theseus. When every plank has been replaced, it’s not the same ship even if it looks like it is.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#336

Post by michannne » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

IanSanders wrote: post #287

michannne wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm concerned as to how you would justify such an institution

How were Labor Unions justified? I'm not saying they don't have issues, but the idea is similar.

This doesn't sound anything like a labor union

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#337

Post by holstvoogd » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

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…

It seems account deletion is mysteriously unavailable at the moment for me due to 'too many attempts' and now my 2nd factor verification had been blocked :|

EDIT: nm, was on the wrong subdomain. Account removal requested & all my blizzard games gone. I hope they'll ask me why.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#338

Post by crazy1van » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

Blizzards statement about having an “investigation” into a “ rule” violation is very disingenuous. The rule is just they can ban anyone at their sole discretion that hurts their image.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#339

Post by umvi » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #331

bayesian_horse wrote: post #215

It's really hard to tell the difference between what is genuinely offensive and what is not. No easy answers. In this case, maybe there is a relatively simple rule: Supporting democracy must not in itself be regarded as offensive...

> It's really hard to tell the difference between what is genuinely offensive and what is not. You can't have both "Free Speech" and "You Can't Say Anything Offensive" at the same time, because there is too much overlap. So you have to choose. The US constitution is pretty clear that "Free Speech" is the higher principle.

"Free Speech only protects you from the government, not private companies who don't want to tolerate your hate on their platform"

I don't agree with this stance, but it is an oft-heard one defending companies who stifle speech (as long as the stifled speech was a far right Nazi website or anti-LGBT comments).

As we see, that stance is dangerous and extends to companies stifling politically inconvenient speech like "I support Hong Kong protesters".

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#340

Post by monocasa » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #120

Crinus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how npm works in detail, doesn't it pull directly from devs' repositories? In that case can't the devs just publish an update that breaks everything?

npm allows for installation of specific versions. So even if a dev publishes a new version that breaks you can select a previous version known to work. A good dev shouldn’t be updating willy-nilly to the latest version just because it’s the latest. They ought to spec a particular version and update after testing.

Doesn't npm allow a dev to replace or redact already released versions?