211–220 of 460 posts
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I, and several friends, all have tickets. We're still deciding what form of protest will be most effective (too overt and the message gets quickly lost when security kicks you out).
Leverage the Q&A section(s)! Be sure to have a good, legitimate question about the game (in case they're screening them), but follow it up by asking, for example, "what is your opinion of Chairman Xi Jinping?"
The huge question here is what's going to happen at BlizzCon in two weeks. There'll be 40,000+ attendees, cameras everywhere, there are usually Q&A panels, homemade signs for player support, cosplay, everything. How can you host BlizzCon when you're terrified of political speech?
The huge question here is what's going to happen at BlizzCon in two weeks. There'll be 40,000+ attendees, cameras everywhere, there are usually Q&A panels, homemade signs for player support, cosplay, everything. How can you host BlizzCon when you're terrified of political speech?
Let's hope they cancel that too.
Organizing public protests on public property near the venue is likely sufficient to encourage this outcome.
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That is a horrible mischaracterization of free speech. The first telegraph network banned journalists who reported bad things against the telegraph company. They manipulated stock prices and influenced elections. That is why common carriage laws were made, which required communications platforms to provide neutral service to everyone. I'm sure that you would have been there, bravely defending the coal barons right to…
Reporting on union organizing is not the same thing as issuing death threats. You're working really hard to blur the clear line between these two things, why?
It's worth remembering that at that point in time, the anti-union faction was strong and brutally violent.
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It's possible Blizzard is only surviving if they have access to Chinese market? We don't know their financials, management might be just prudent from their point of view in order to survive (people are way more obsessed with gaming in Eastern Asia than anywhere else and those regions have largest population). The management is certainly fully aware of the whole sh*tshow and likely aren't happy with whatever choice th…
Their statements to shareholders put the Chinese market at 10% of their total revenue. ATVI is posting billions of dollars in profits, and has a profit margin of 25%+. Activision Blizzard is in no risk of going bankrupt even if they lose the entire Chinese market.
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The intent of the founders was to ensure that citizens and journalists could speak out against their government without fear of retribution by the state. The "anything ought to be fine to say anywhere without consequence" interpretation is a modern phenomenon that extremists have used to platform and normalize violent suppressive rhetoric.
That is a horrible mischaracterization of free speech. The first telegraph network banned journalists who reported bad things against the telegraph company. They manipulated stock prices and influenced elections. That is why common carriage laws were made, which required communications platforms to provide neutral service to everyone. I'm sure that you would have been there, bravely defending the coal barons right to…
In general though, yes, you have no right to have a particular editorial published in the new york times on your behalf. What the press deigns to publish is protected. You're also free to start your own paper, or blog, or whatever.
The huge question here is what's going to happen at BlizzCon in two weeks. There'll be 40,000+ attendees, cameras everywhere, there are usually Q&A panels, homemade signs for player support, cosplay, everything. How can you host BlizzCon when you're terrified of political speech?
How do you respond when a character from your top grossing game is turned into a political meme? This is what Blizzard has been learning this week. How do you handle potentially thousands of attendees, at your organization's biggest annual event, turning it into a platform for political protest agaisnt your biggest growing market? There's three possible events: BlizzCon is canceled. Extremely unlikely but possible. B…
They could win everywhere but China, by explicitly choosing to withdraw their products from China.
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I, and several friends, all have tickets. We're still deciding what form of protest will be most effective (too overt and the message gets quickly lost when security kicks you out).
"too overt and the message gets quickly lost when security kicks you out" True, but also be prepared to be searched. If security can't legally search people, given the size of the event, they will very likely have police to patrol and do random checks "in case of terrorism", so hide your HK shirts, signs etc. because they would almost surely be confiscated for "inciting violence". If Blizzard fears any negative demon…
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No, they aren't. Hong Kong is about free speech insofar as the protestors are fighting for their freedom of speech from the Chinese (and Chinese proxy) government. You do not, should not, and will never have a "right" to "free speech" in media that are privately owned and managed by others. You have a right to not have a government censor your speech. The federal government cannot compell you to remove an editorial f…
Where, on the internet, do I have a right to free speech? The internet is pivotal to modern communications, yet it is effectively entirely private. If the citizens and their representatives felt strongly enough to create common carrier laws for telegraphs (see a sibling comment for more details), why should we feel differently about speech that travels over channels designed and built for communication across interne…
You don't have a right to free speech on the comment section of my blog, or my twitch chat stream, or my discord channel. Those platforms enable me to moderate that content. If they lacked that feature, it wouldn't support or undermine anyone's rights, mine or yours.
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First they came for the skeletons, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a skeleton.
For real though, changing character design for things like skeletons because it has a different meaning in another culture is a perfectly normal thing to do. Changing characters to scrub them of LGBT characteristics that are illegal in another country is cowardly and should have caused a much bigger outrage than it did. Banning players for supporting pro-democracy movements outside the game and retroactively seizing…