Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer • Hacker News Board

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#241

Post by steelframe » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:06 AM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #134

jrockway wrote: post #14

The Internet's reaction to this has warmed my heart a little. Overwatch and Hearthstone are among my favorite computer games. I've certainly played more Overwatch than any other game. I have made real-world and online friends in Overwatch. I met my girlfriend in Overwatch. It made me sad to have to throw all that away yesterday. But the conversations we're having as a result of this is great. The mainstream media is…

One thing to note -- it's not really troubling for a country to have a lot of influence. It's troubling for China to have as much influence as it does when it's directly trying to undermine freedoms that we have fought tooth and nail and died a million lives to get in The West. This is not a question of a foreign country being different. This is a question of a foreign company forcing us to slowly give up the very th…

> Hong Kong is literally protesting to have the right to a trail by jury! How anyone in The West could not take their side is baffling to me.

Because local prejudice can provide bias, jurors can be influenced by a lawyer's courtroom performance, most juries aren't actually a random sample of the population, long trials usually create hasty verdicts, most jurors don’t have a background in law, and jurors do not need to reason their decision.

Not to say that there aren't pro's to trial-by-jury, but not every Westerner is convinced that trial-by-jury is better than many of the alternatives, and that doesn't make a Westerner any less of a "Westerner."

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#242

Post by reaperducer » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:16 AM UTC

lucasmullens wrote: post #131

reaperducer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you under the impression that China can't break encryption?

Are you under the impression that China can break encryption? Not saying that it's 100% impossible, but that one certainly needs a citation.

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#243

Post by atarian » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:34 AM UTC

beirut_bootleg wrote: post #187

atarian wrote: post #59

>The demonstration’s numbers fluctuated throughout the day, the two employees said, ranging from a dozen to 30, and the protesters departed sometime in the late afternoon. So less than 1% of the company? Not trying to minimize the issue here but let's also not make events sound bigger than they really are.

In the same vein, let's say there are only 400k people online showing outrage at this. That's less than 0.01% of the world's population. Now weigh this ratio against the violation of human rights, police violence, ethnic cleansing and organ harvesting, and ask your question again. Thinking that numbers is all that matters is the same as valuing $$$ over morals, which is what this is all about.

You're making a strawman argument about morals, which is not in the same vein as what I said. My point was this piece was sensationalized.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#244

Post by dear » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:45 AM UTC

hnick wrote: post #193

harshreality wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hong Kong's entire value , as far as I can see [and I'm referring to the value of Hong Kong as a community including people and businesses, not just their geographic value], either as a place to live or to do business or to visit, comes from it being a SAR with its own government, culture, historical legacy, and lack of interference from its mother country. If it becomes a homogenized satellite of Shenzhen with sky h…

What proportion of China's economy is HK? I don't know a good source but I recall seeing it's a low single digit percentage of China as a whole. They definitely punch above their weight per capita but I feel like China is more than willing and able to take the loss. After all, with Western governments changing every few years, who will even remember in a decade?

Measuring Hong Kong's importance for China by its GDP is as useful as measuring your eyes' importance to you by their weight.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#245

Post by ahaferburg » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:57 AM UTC

lsniddy wrote: post #139

Free Tibet never seemed to be controversial here in the US, makes me wonder why supporting Hong Kong is.

Because it started in the eighties and we didn't have Reddit to make shitposts about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/dfmgst/oc_...

I remember it being mentioned in the "Work rules" book by that Google guy. They had a desert in their canteen called "Free Tibet Goji-Chocolate Creme Pie..." in the canteen. They said "well, the food is free, and the berries come from Tibet, so ..." Trying to be cheeky. But several people threatened to quit over this, and they had a huge discussion on the internal mailing list with over 1300 replies. The chef who created it got suspended, and then people got worried because of the chilling effect that this would have on free speech. Eventually the suspension was reversed. Very dramatic.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#246

Post by Nexxxeh » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:01 AM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #184

mattrp wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m amazed at just how open (and wrong) cctv’s recent reply to the nba scandal was: “We are strongly dissatisfied and we oppose Silver’s claim to support Morey’s right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech,” CCTV said in its statement in Chinese, which was translated by CNBC“ This is not just wrong, it’s so…

It's a bit more difficult than that, I think. If you look at free speech in Europe for example, in eg Germany there are laws against hate speech or defamation of individual people (quite differentiated, an opinion is ok and true facts are ok, but invented facts are not). One of the targets is Nazi propaganda, and in general the support is good. Still, the goal is similar, social stability, peace and protection of min…

In the UK (Scotland specifically) we had the ridiculous prosecution of Markus "Count Dankula" Meechan. We've certainly not found the right balance over here.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#247

Post by jeffdavis » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:03 AM UTC

steelframe wrote: post #241

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to note -- it's not really troubling for a country to have a lot of influence. It's troubling for China to have as much influence as it does when it's directly trying to undermine freedoms that we have fought tooth and nail and died a million lives to get in The West. This is not a question of a foreign country being different. This is a question of a foreign company forcing us to slowly give up the very th…

> Hong Kong is literally protesting to have the right to a trail by jury! How anyone in The West could not take their side is baffling to me. Because local prejudice can provide bias, jurors can be influenced by a lawyer's courtroom performance, most juries aren't actually a random sample of the population, long trials usually create hasty verdicts, most jurors don’t have a background in law, and jurors do not need t…

Juries are not about accuracy. They are there as another line of defense against tyranny: it's harder to make up charges or convict people of ridiculous things when a jury can nullify it.

Nullification is rare and unfortunately that line of defense largely failed during the drug war. But I think that's largely because the government was able to successfully make it a racial issue. It's not always easy to take advantage of deep social divisions for all kinds of policies, and that's why dictators don't like juries.

Kind of like guns. How useful are they against tyranny really? Useful enough that tyrants try to take them away, and that's all I need to know.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#248

Post by prepend » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:07 AM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #171

prepend wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blizzard survives on monthly recurring revenue streams. Boycotting disrupts this stream in a very consistent manner. 1M boycotters mean $10M lost per month plus all the addition revenue from lost streamers and watchers. Blizzard made $1.4B last quarter [0]. It doesn’t bankrupt them but losing 2.5% of earnings sucks. [0] https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-d...

I thought the point was to affect China's policy, not to bankrupt companies we don't like.

I think the point is to change behavior of firms by punishing them financially until they change. If they don’t ever change then I think they deserve to go bankrupt.

I don’t think boycotting Blizzard will have much of a direct effect on China’s policy. But if enough companies and governments act responsibly then China may change their policy.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#249

Post by throwaway66920 » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:08 AM UTC

undefined3840 wrote: post #237

throwaway66920 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really think that contradicts anything I said

Just because you choose not to work on a project due to personal reasons doesn’t free you of the unethical or immoral things the company you chose to work for does. And if you actually believe it does then it only supports the argument that these firms have found a way to act immorally in the pursuit of fees while making sure their staff don’t become too demoralized. They know there will always be someone to take on…

Conversely, just because a few people do a bad thing does not characterize the moral stature of a large decentralized organization. Sometimes, bad decisions are made. That doesn’t mean the day to day is one that makes the world worse, both in fact and in personal perspective.

The Purdue thing was really bad. That’s acknowledged. Nobody is happy about it. Plenty of work has been done pro bono to combat the opioid crisis even prior to the realization of what had happened. I have worked at other places and I legit feel comfortable saying that relative to most American businesses, the firm is not an evil purely profit maximizing machine. Most people’s day to day is benign and well intended and you can just straight up talk to people about it because people are interested in such things.

tldr: while I fully recognize bad things have happened I would say that on average McKinsey is more morally self conscious than your average us company. Take it as you will

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#250

Post by dmoy » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:14 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #196

dmoy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China is basically no different than it was under Mao This is very much not true. For one, there's rampant consumer capitalism, very little social net, no tens of millions starving to death, and something like 10-100x more personal income. I don't know if you have family that grew up under Mao or not that you can go check with, but, this is a really, really false statement to make. I'm not saying it's all peachy no…

> This is very much not true. For one, there's rampant consumer capitalism, very little social net, no tens of millions starving to death, and something like 10-100x more personal income. Is this a list of four different differences? Under Mao, when tens of millions of people starved to death, how much of a social net was there?

Yes four separate differences.

Under Mao, despite an ostensibly strong social net, many still starved to death. I intentionally listed those two together because Mao time was not so great for many.