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

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#671

Post by ev0lv » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

mola wrote: post #438

whatshisface wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think back to before gay marriage was accepted as a culturally obvious fact, some of the arguments against it involved hating gays, but others didn't. Without the ability to tell which beliefs actually motivated his donation, it is not possible to discern if he was against gays or not. (I'll refrain from giving any specific examples in order to avoid starting that debate again, but I think most of us can remem…

What is A genuine reason for being against gay marriage that does not include hating the concept of gays, or the concept of marriage? Two adults want to share their life, with the burdens and rights that non gays get. Really, why would you care if not because you find the concept of same sex couples bad and harmful?

I'll give it a try.

Marriage yields children. Making new people grows a civilization. The state would definitely want to incentive any means to grow a civilization. In the modern day, these incentives look like tax deductions. Gay marriage doesn't yield children. Why should the state give the same incentives?

My solution: The State shouldn't create incentives for people to get married. People will get married because they want to.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#672

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #585

shadowgovt wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, there's little the US government can do here without dragging things back towards the McCarthy era. What would we have them do? Apply pressure to Activision/Blizzard to reverse the company's own internal policy on "keep politics out of the game stuff?" That's a pretty clear violation of freedom of speech, the press, and / or association, to tell a private company who they must endorse. It's not unpreceden…

> What would we have them do? We have laws prohibiting private actors from interfering with American foreign policy. And we have safe harbours for protected speech. Combining these two, narrowly, to apply to Hong Kong and Taiwan might thread the needle. To get around First Amendment issues, it would have to be a law saying, in effect, private actors may not punish employees, contractors or members for expressing opin…

"American foreign policy is we support Hong Kong against China" is something you'll be hard-pressed to find the US government in agreement on.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#673

Post by erulabs » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

Between this and the NBA drama over the same issue: is there a coordinated campaign going on re: censoring the west’s information on HK?

It disturbs me that most older people I talk politics with seems to think we ought to confront China over IP violations... human rights violations and anti-democratic activity seem infinitely more important to me.

I can’t boycott the NBA as I’m not a fan - but I’ve given Blizzard a lot of time and money - in the past. What a shame. Are there other recent examples besides the NBA and this?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#674

Post by pgcj_poster » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

xtian wrote: post #548

knodi123 wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the thing is they do not care about free speech. All these companies care about is revenue. Nature of a publicly traded company in a nation that deifies capitalism. Blizzard is on the S&P 500, for pete's sake. If the CEO prioritized something other than profits, he'd be replaced by the board for breaching his obligations to the shareholders.

This isn't actually true. Look up the legal definition of fiduciary duties for US corporations.

I think the person you're replying to was just saying that the CEO would probably be replaced if they prioritized something other than profits, not that it was legally mandated.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#675

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #644

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…

>Blizzard is not responsible for what players say in interviews. In our society, it still matters that people can tolerate other opinions. I think Blizzard has a legitimate "time and place" argument here. They shouldn't regulate competitors speech across the board but I think it's reasonable to mandate that interviews associated with official events focus on Hearthstone and stay away from controversial topics. Of cou…

If they had just kicked him out of the tournament, I'd definitely be on that side of things. I don't want a world where all competitions are full of people yelling about hot-button issues. But banning him for a year is so obviously disproportionate, it's hard to see how it could have happened if not for fear of China.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#676

Post by phlakaton » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #310

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…

Isn't that cancel culture though?

And what if it were?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#677

Post by luckydata » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #630

johnchristopher wrote: post #231

From https://www.pcgamer.com/blitzchung-removed-from-hearthstone-... a description of the incident : > As Andy reported earlier today, Blitzchung did not back down after the sudden removal of the broadcast, during which he wore a gas mask and goggles before shouting "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" Following the incident he released a statement elaborating on his stance, writing "I know what my action on…

Okay that explains it. I thought banning for 12 months was a little harsh for someone making a political statement once, but he knew what he was doing and doubled down on it.

It sounds like you agree with the measure. Is that the case?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#678

Post by Nasrudith » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #585

shadowgovt wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, there's little the US government can do here without dragging things back towards the McCarthy era. What would we have them do? Apply pressure to Activision/Blizzard to reverse the company's own internal policy on "keep politics out of the game stuff?" That's a pretty clear violation of freedom of speech, the press, and / or association, to tell a private company who they must endorse. It's not unpreceden…

> What would we have them do? We have laws prohibiting private actors from interfering with American foreign policy. And we have safe harbours for protected speech. Combining these two, narrowly, to apply to Hong Kong and Taiwan might thread the needle. To get around First Amendment issues, it would have to be a law saying, in effect, private actors may not punish employees, contractors or members for expressing opin…

Of course the first itself is largely hillariously unenforceable even a century ago because of global speech and the First Ammendment - which is a good thing.

I don't think that carve out would be constitutional unless it was even more broad. Say "personal capacity political advocacy is protected" so you could get fired for saying " supports Free Tibet" without proper permission/authority but "I, not speaking on behalf of support Free Tibet". Even that would open itself to damn uncomfortable side effects legally for a weatherman opening every broadcast with "I support the reestablishment of Rhodesia!" being protected as well.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#679

Post by kerkeslager » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

A few months ago we were talking about Facebook and Twitter censoring bigots, and a lot of people responded that it's fine when a corporation does it on their own platform--they own the platform and can do what they want with it.

My position was that when corporate platforms are such an important part of our communications, protecting free speech on those platforms remains important even though they're corporately owned[1]. It's easy to be pro-censorship when you agree with the censors, but corporations are amoral and if we set the standard that censorship doesn't matter, there's no guarantee that they'll only censor the way we want them to.

Consider this an "I told you so" post.

EDIT: More on this subject, perhaps a bit better-thought-out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194433

[1] I'd further argue that we shouldn't give up so much of our communication to corporately-owned platforms for this reason, but that's a separate discussion.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#680

Post by ergothus » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

joelx wrote: post #580

ehsankia wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, general politics is not really in the wheelhouse for HN, but these two specific cases encroached on tech, which is why they got much more attention. Other acts of technological censorship from China also often reach the front page. I don't think there's anything nefarious, it's that those other topics aren't really relevant to HN.

We should all boycott Blizzard and the NBA.

After bnetd I boycotted Blizzard for years. The only tangible result was that I missed out on Warcraft 3. After the 1-click patent, I boycotted Amazon for years. They didn't appear to have missed my money.

I'm all for collective action, but I'm not sure if boycotts are reliable. I've seen companies respond to social pressures, but like net neutrality, when they can make money they just try again more subtilely, and that presumes the original pressure was successful.

I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T boycott Blizzard and the NBA...but do we have other options as well? Governmental action to be backing, companies with clear "good" positions we should promote, etc?

I don't have ideas, I just have a pile of bitterness and hopelessness, and issues like Hong Kong feel a lot more important than 1 click.