Previously discussed two days ago:
Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests
31–40 of 48 posts
Re: Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests
#32DMCA is the other one that can be abused easily. I've seen people weild DMCA on Reddit like a weapon, attacking entire forums with copyright requests and Reddit automatically taking stuff down and even suspending accounts for "repeat copyright infringement". Always the sign of a poor law, but sometimes useful to expose it. I hope it gets documented well.
Abusing that is technically illegal, although due to how favoured rights owners are (even presumptive ones), I've never heard of anyone getting even a slap on the wrist for it.
GDPR, though, is made to be used for this. It's companies' responsibility to set up processes so they can give you this information easily; if they haven't, you're doing a public service by encouraging it. And it's perfectly reasonsble to ask for an audit of how they treat your personal info, when they just very publicly cozied up to an oppressive police state.
Re: Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read differently your comment is essentially "We must tolerate intolerance" No, we most certainly do not.
I agree with you, we should not tolerate intolerance. Why should Blizzard have to tolerate someone else's views? They are perfectly within their right to deny someone an association or a platform whose views that they do not agree with.
China is within its rights to demand Blizzard censor content. US user/viewers are within their rights to criticize and boycott them. Blizzard is within its right to change their policy or ignore the criticism.
Re: Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read differently your comment is essentially "We must tolerate intolerance" No, we most certainly do not.
I agree with you, we should not tolerate intolerance. Why should Blizzard have to tolerate someone else's views? They are perfectly within their right to deny someone an association or a platform whose views that they do not agree with.
Everyone here is within their rights.
Re: Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests
#35Why not "punish" them by criticizing them, or boycotting them? Even "review bombing" sucks, but abusing the GDPR, that really sucks. I'm very much in support of the protests, I think what Blizzard did was shameful, and I loved seeing the hundreds of memes on their subreddits. I'm not completely against civil disobedience and some tasteful vandalism. But still, that doesn't mean anything goes at the drop of a hat, the…
I am not punishing them with GDPR requests.
I am really curious what they do have on me, especially now that they start to expand greatly into chinesee market. I don't even play their games any more as they all turned into bland pulp.
Re: Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests
#36Is this really the best move? Blizzard made a smart move; the player was going to piss off a large portion of their user base. Freedom of speech works both ways.
Yes, they aren't legally obliged to provide a platform that allows freedom of speech.
Yet they also have to expect a backlash if they don't provide it,as freedom of speech is integral part of our culture.
People expect that, and any defence of type 'but by law we aren't required to provide that!' will just piss their western customers off.
EDIT: not to mention that in this case the punishment was severe. They could try to stay apolitical by just giving him a slap on the wrist and a temporary ban on tournaments. It would both send a message and work as a deterrent.
Strangely enough Activision-Blizzard soon after that announced their Call of Duty Mobile - designed by Chinese company team responsible for Diablo Immortal.. which was subsidized by CCP.
It was stone cold calculation of: profit loss from hearthstone backlash vs earnings from Chinese mobile market
Re: Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests
#37Something that I think would do more is for the e-sports community to keep criticizing the CCP on live streams. Ping your favorite players on the issue and ask what they think. A lot of them will probably try to distance themselves from politics altogether but some of them might actually respond in ways that piss people off. If that generates more demands from the CCP to ban people then Blizzard has to think long and hard about who's paying the bills; the players or the CCP.
Re: Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
So anyone providing a platform owes you "free speech"?
Brian Kibler put it very well: http://bmkgaming.com/statement-on-blitzchung/ > I do think that Blizzard was correct in issuing him a penalty for his actions. They do not want to set the precedent for their official broadcasts being used as political tools. The players agreed to particular rules for behavior, and he violated those rules. [..] > All that having been said, there are additional factors at play here. The…
Here is the video [1] with complete context. Unfortunately I've yet to find a complete translated transcript. But from what I've read (from potentially unreliable sources) the casters said 'Go ahead and say those 8 words and we'll wrap up here. There's nothing else to talk about. Let's lower our heads.' He then said 'Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time' while wearing a gas mask. Guessing that's 8 words in Mandarin. They then laugh and clap.
This is actually the thing that most frustrates me about these protests and issue in general. Finding complete, in context, recordings of the critical events is so incredibly difficult. This makes no sense since we are now in an era where everything is on camera from 500 different angles. But it is what it is. And of course providing in context video gets downvoted, because it makes the issues look less black and white. But that to me is the clearest example of idiocracy. We should not seek to create Hollywood villains and heroes in how things are presented. People should make judgments based on reality which, almost invariably, is more of a million shades of gray rather than good vs evil, right vs wrong.
Re: Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests
#39People call that "punishing" but it's nothing of the sort: it's just exercising a fundamental right to access whatever data companies have on you.
If they didn't do the work to automate this 3 years and half after the law was voted, then it's on them.
Re: Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
So anyone providing a platform owes you "free speech"?
I think in an era where almost all communication happens over a small number of platforms that are controlled by companies, we might have think about that one really hard.
In the end I think this isn't going to just apply to speech but many facets of modern life that are increasingly controlled by companies instead of governments.
For example within 10 days of Wikileaks publishing 'cablegate' back in 2010, Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, and Western Union all blocked donations to the site. [1] This effectively destroyed nearly all of their funding. As we've reached an era where a variety of absolutely critical industries are completely or near completely monopolized, it means that things like the first amendment are much less meaningful. If the government wanted to ban some form of speech, all they need to do is to make a call to a handful of companies and, like that, they've banned > 90% of discussion of it. And from the company's perspectives, they can agree to cooperate and expect rich rewards and favorable treatment from the government in the future, or they can refuse to no real gain and end up facing the full fury of an incredibly far-reaching government.
Perhaps one of the many reasons that the founding fathers were so obsessed with keeping governments small and relatively weak. This power of coercion is in some ways even more dangerous than any law that might be passed since it can often effect the exact same end while keeping most of the public generally uninformed.