All they did was ask him to say to slogan according to the people on reddit, something he was going to say regardless.

If you&#x27;ve just heard it that does not make it a fact just yet.

This might not be true though. I have heard that during the broadcast they had been supporting Hong Kong. Not saying this is the wrong thing to do though but just a fact.

Through the lens of appeasement it makes complete sense

From what I read the casters prompted and encouraged him to say it, hence why they were so quick to drop down out of frame.  This is just what I have read, as I do not speak the language.

Also fired both casters working on the event, even though they did not know what was going to be said:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Slasher&#x2F;status&#x2F;1181443974420189185" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Slasher&#x2F;status&#x2F;1181443974420189185</a>

&gt; Into your message is built the assumption that all &quot;politics&quot; is the same.Don&#x27;t say things like that on HN. They don&#x27;t like it...

&gt;Into your message is built the assumption that all &quot;politics&quot; is the same.Not really: there are politics I agree with and politics I disagree with. That doesn&#x27;t mean that I believe Blizzard should give a loudspeaker to those who agree with me. I think that&#x27;s stupid because it could turn against me at some point. Some people seem not to think ahead.

Into your message is built the assumption that all &quot;politics&quot; is the same.That&#x27;s not the case. And further, pretending that oppression and fascism and ethnic cleansing is the same as fighting against those things, because oppressing and murdering people is just another &quot;politics&quot; and not something special, is by itself pro-fascist and evil stance.

&quot;Human rights&quot; = politics. Blizzard can choose what they broadcast using their streams. I&#x27;m sure if someone decided to wear a tshirt with a fasces in it you&#x27;d agree... but since this is on the other side of the spectrum of politics, you disagree. Honestly, very short-sighted.

They interview the player&#x2F;person, what they stand for is their own prerogative. It isn&#x27;t up to Blizzard to dictate what people should think or are allowed to say on issues such as human rights. It is their right to ban someone for what they deem &#x27;misconduct&#x27; though, so yes they are in their rights doing what they did here.They will also have to deal with the consequences of that decision, a lot of people are cancelling their subscriptions and deleting their blizzard accounts.This will probably not impact them much, but hopefully there will get big enough that it does.

&gt; Article 35. Citizens of the People&#x27;s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.

Absolutely nothing, because in the US we have freedom of speech codified into our constitution.Unlike China.

Make Azeroth Great Again [0]? You could by them at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shop.esfand.tv&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shop.esfand.tv&#x2F;</a> before, but it’s currently under construction (the website’s &lt;title&gt;&lt;&#x2F;title&gt; still has it in the name).[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=494dkjXL3p4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=494dkjXL3p4</a>

&gt;And it’s true that they’re (as far as I know) consistently applying a rule they set out a long time ago.Have they ever enforced this rule in the past? If not, it&#x27;s difficult to speak of consistency.

It’s reasonable from the perspective of maximising profit, sure. And it’s true that they’re (as far as I know) consistently applying a rule they set out a long time ago.But that doesn’t make it the right decision, morally. Sometimes rules should be broken.

Not Blizzard, but in pro Dota, one of their champions, PPD, was wearing his MAGA hat with no repurcussions during last election cycle. Valve is also pretty bad about bootlicking Chinese authorities, so I don&#x27;t think this comparison works.

Seems reasonable that they don&#x27;t want to allow players to push their politics using the official Blizzard streams. They are free to do so in their spare time.What do you think Blizzard would do if some guy wore a MAGA hat in an official stream?

I guess what I meant - I looked at these issues differently, others probably too. 
Apple, Google &quot;selling out&quot; to be in China? Oh well - that seems reasonable since its a big market. 
South Park put it into different perspective. I guess that is what art does

China has been leveraging their power &quot;quietly&quot; for some time now. Anything anti-China gets buried or discredited or shouted down using whataboutisms. Even here on hackernews you&#x27;ll see tons of posts on negative chinese news from month old accounts fuzzing the narrative saying some variation of &quot;it&#x27;s not easy to understand if you&#x27;re not chinese etc etc&quot;The hong kong issue is just bringing the issue into the mainstream

true. blizzard has even done this with world of warcraft back in the day. to launch it in china they had to remove all skeleton models

While I agree they’re spot on, it’s not like this is a new issue.

South Park were the sellouts that paved the way for all of this.... but around 8 years ago they decided that money was more important than their principles... And here we are.&gt; money was more important than their principlesBTW that&#x27;s really been the core principle. The US citizens lost their game of chicken with the govt.

South Park is spot on this season. You could say they are good with predictions, but I think they just gave different perspective to something that already has been happening
(episodes on China censorship)

You don&#x27;t get it. It is not woke. That is the fun part. To make them dance morally in the chase of profit. To put them in between the blue checkmarks and the china government and to end pissing off both sides.

The other way around. Woke Inc. want to stay woke, but they also want to not be on the bad side of the Chinese state due to business interest there.Hence, the woke company needs to do pretty un-woke things, and their hypocrisy is exposed.

How is bowing to China woke? Not following.

Not sure why this is downvoted. I think it&#x27;s great and we may see users deliberately do such things to get companies to ban them, which leads to bigger publicity and awareness at little expense.In this case, the player sacrificed the prize money and some e-status, but for the publicity it got, it was probably worth it.

Users can still E2E encrypt their messages. As long as they choose not to store them in iCloud, they’re safe.

Made me laugh when Apple made a big stink about privacy BUT &quot;chose&quot; to headquarter their messaging servers in China under &quot;Chinese oversight&quot; basically compromising every iMessage user in China.This is of course labelled as &quot;compliance&quot;Privacy and Encryption don&#x27;t mean much when the government literally controls the servers

Nike already pulled all their Houston Rockets merchandise in China.

&gt;If someone manages to do it with Nike it will be fun to watch.It just happened with the NBA:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;08&#x2F;asia&#x2F;nba-china-houston-rockets-intl-hnk-scli&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;08&#x2F;asia&#x2F;nba-china-houston-rocket...</a>They pulled the 2017 All-Star game from Charlotte over transgender bathroom laws, but bent over for China when a prominent manager spoke out in support of Hong Kong. Utterly spineless.

This is shaping to be fun tactic in the culture war. To force corporations that want to be seen as woke in the west to bow to China which will hurt their image at home.If someone manages to do it with Nike it will be fun to watch.

What is happening there is literally what has led to revolutions in several western countries over the last couple centuries.The Chinese are correct to be afraid, they have spent the last half century cleansing the concept of freedom from their society and they are terrified of what comes next.People are going to start dying publicly in HK very soon, and the rest of the world will have to decide which side of history they want to stand on.The American&#x27;s needed allies to succeed in their revolution against a much more powerful nation, HK will need allies too.

&quot;Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;slasher&#x2F;status&#x2F;1181065339230130181" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;slasher&#x2F;status&#x2F;1181065339230130181</a>

What was the exact quote? The article doesn&#x27;t mention it. I assume it was in support of the HK protestors.

I see, thanks for the explanation.Maybe I should&#x27;ve rephrased the title of the post better to prevent it next time.

Just read through the comments here and it&#x27;s obvious why it got flagged off the front page. Grade A flamewar material.

Previous discussion (for some reason, it was removed off the front page pretty quickly, hmm): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21189491" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21189491</a>

No, being gay itself is not a political decision, but making a big deal about how progressive you are as a company because your game has gay characters is very much a political statement.

The whole point is that it is considered as political in quite a few countries. (and even where it isn&#x27;t, it is considered as such by quite some people)(yes, this might change in the future, but we&#x27;re talking about today)

Making characters in a video game gay probably shouldn&#x27;t be a political statement, but at least today it still is.

Human rights aren&#x27;t political! (of course they are)

Not according to the pro diversity. For them having gay characters is a bid deal.

True, if you are privileged enough for that to be your immediate reality

Blizzard is 100% fine with their games having a political message when they think it gives them free brownie points (announcing various characters as being explicitly gay), but are complete total cowards when it might cost them something.

I interpreted it as in relation to Blizzard.

I assume Blizzard were under pressure from China, as why else would they do this. So if this assumption is true they were cornered in they had to &#x27;offend&#x27; someone and felt China has a longer memory than the rest of their market + China would likely ban their games whereas how many ROW people will do this?From a pure business decision it seems to make sense as the lesser of 2 evils.

The only problem is China is too big to care. Streisand effect only affects those people where a spotlight from a small percent of the internet heavily affects them

Well the western world is an even juicier market for China.

They don’t have to. There are companies that pursue positive impact, though few large or public ones at this time. Patagonia is a great example of a semi-large one.

I expect companies to do what’s morally right not merely maximize profits while doing anything that is legally acceptable. I expect leaders of companies to do what’s morally right while explaining  to shareholders that if they disagree they can sell their shares or replace them. I have zero respect for a manager at Blizzard or the NBA who decides to try to pull what they did this week.

They do, which is why we consumers have to resort to boycott. It&#x27;s the only way to make bowing to china a poor financial decision

I thought Western companies had to pursue profits at all costs? China is a big juicy market.

People should start boycotting western companies that perform this kind of humiliating bowing to China, Saudi Arabia, etc.  Yet of course, most companies are doing that...

That&#x27;s the best part, there is no correct choice.Corporations love sitting the moral grey area on issues like this, but putting them in a position of having to choose between looking like Chinese stooges or getting banned from China will break their minds.

&gt; Can we please start a cultural movement that forces large corporations to choose between appeasing Chinese censors and looking like fools to the rest of the west or getting banned in China.But what about the share-holder value?

Make them choose between the two markets.I&#x27;m tired of the idea that the Western and Chinese markets can both be appeased the middle of the road morality.What is happening in HK right now is wrong, and the west has fought wars over this very issue.

This is what happens when you fund your deficit spending with foreign investors for too long.

Matt Stoller has been doing some coverage on just how much control China has built in Western economies. Quite scary.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mattstoller.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;how-joe-biden-empowered-chinas-censorship" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mattstoller.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;how-joe-biden-empowered-c...</a>

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.

If you think that is scary look at who owns our defense industries now that the pre Clinton era small contractors were forced to merge.

&gt; AMC is fully owned by Chinese.AMC was majority-owned by China’s Dalian Wanda, but they scaled back from 60% to 38% about a year ago.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;us-amc-dalian-wanda-silver-lake&#x2F;chinas-dalian-wanda-trims-amc-exposure-with-silver-lake-deal-idUSKCN1LU1Y6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;us-amc-dalian-wanda-silver-l...</a>

The solution is very simple. The government should take possession of any company that grows beyond a maximum size and distribute the shares to the public.

Tencent also owns a sizable amount of GGG which operates Path of Exile.

And in turn, ~30% of tencent is owned by prosus&#x2F;naspers (dutch&#x2F;south african listed). So you can pressure &quot;close to home&quot; in a way.

Doesn&#x27;t Tencent sort of have reputation of going _against_ chinese government? Also AFAIK big chunk of it is owned by western investment firms etc.: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Naspers#Tencent_investment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Naspers#Tencent_investment</a>

Tencent isn&#x27;t the problem with Blizzard.Hearthstone is massive in China. Hearthstone has far more players than all other regions combined. The chinese market is what keeps the game alive.That is the problem here.

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. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pcgamer.com&#x2F;every-game-company-that-tencent-has-invested-in&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pcgamer.com&#x2F;every-game-company-that-tencent-has-...</a>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 by Chinese.Forbes Media sold majority stake to Chinese company.

Only because they are not facing any consequences back home.It needs to be clear to them that this is a binary choice, you either support totalitarianism or you are against it.

Isn&#x27;t that already true now? The problem is that most corporations seem to be picking the first option.

I feel like social media is the best legal venue for it.Start sending messages to every game dev, project manager, and director at these companies asking them why they support the totalitarian oppression of HK. Ask them what they are currently doing to limit the influence of totalitarian regimes on their corporate policy.Make the issue personal for the companies by fomenting discontent from within.

How do you suppose this would be implemented? These things only affect a very small niche audience. Most people don&#x27;t care what is going on in HK and even less people will care about this incident.

&gt; Six Corporations control 90% of the media in AmericaTotally incomparable.America has the First Amendment. Its government and corporations can be held accountable in courts. Any rando has the capacity to pine off about anything on Twitter. Meanwhile China boasts a centralised bureaucracy literally censoring Winnie the Pooh images because its dictator doesn’t like his resemblance.Yes, America has a media ownership concentration problem. No, it’s not remotely comparable to Xi’s Beijing.

Six Corporations control 90% of the media in America.  They can make business decisions to censor whomever they want and they are global corporations doing lots of business in China.

It is rather optimistic to think a change would be possible to emerge on its own, given the active and increasing, almost total surveilance going on. Technology is a game changer here, freedom movements are getting harder and have to perhaps evolve their own tech...

The main focus of a business is to turn in a profit and making decisions that doesn&#x27;t align in some way with that key objective is not something they will likely engage with.The situation in HK is bad, but at the end of the day people still want to keep their jobs, and company leaders need to try to do what is in the best interests for the company and the employees.It wouldn&#x27;t happen, but assuming if it did and you made companies pick between demonstrating integrity or looking the other way to do business with China and be publicly denounced, any half decent leader would bite the bullet and do the former, essentially every large US company.Also keep in mind how much money from Chinese companies is integrated into the US. Things are much more complicated than you make out, I don&#x27;t think it is right to draw a line in the sand and push this &#x27;you&#x27;re either with us or against us&#x27; narrative.Things can&#x27;t stay like this in China for long, the change will happen from within the country, all we can do as business partners is try to not get involved in the ensuing chaos and protect our own well being and loved ones.

It needs to be organized, focused, and have real consequence for the companies that choose to stay in the middle.A couple of snarky tweets isn&#x27;t going to save hong kong, and taiwan after that.The writing is on the wall, if we don&#x27;t stand against China now the rest of the world will stand idly by as they erase 200+ years of liberalism and the greatest improvement in human rights in our species history.

Gradual decoupling from China is the only idea that I have heard that will work. Open to other ideas though.

Can we please start a cultural movement that forces large corporations to choose between appeasing Chinese censors and looking like fools to the rest of the west or getting banned in China.Really seems like a win win scenario.

This is why whenever i think about buying software i check if they have a DRM-free version for Windows. 99% of the time this ensures i&#x27;ll be able to use the software for years to come even if the company shuts down.

Proprieatary software are shortcuts, but infrastructure requires open source. That&#x27;s the only durable software out there.

Same thing happened with Tridef. The company went under, didn&#x27;t release a free version of the software, and now people who bought it legally have to resort to using a crack.

It&#x27;s serendipitous all these events are happening now for me personally. I was recently burned by a piece of very useful and well crafted software (closed source). I did a fresh install on my machine and went to find their website which to my dismay had completely disappeared! I followed whatever breadcrumbs were left and found a whole thing had happened while I wasn&#x27;t paying attention where the copyright for this software was now in complete limbo and noone who had recently purchased a license could redownload it.This is allegedly where the software exists now.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;audiofile.engineering&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;audiofile.engineering&#x2F;</a>Which contains absolutely no trace of the program Myriad Pro.This is the discussion from kvr about it.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kvraudio.com&#x2F;forum&#x2F;viewtopic.php?t=525534" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kvraudio.com&#x2F;forum&#x2F;viewtopic.php?t=525534</a>On the plus side I doubled down and learned SoX which I wrap up in some python now and it&#x27;s fast, open source and others can develop on my efforts.

Also, I&#x27;m disappointed I missed the obvious &quot;Softwars&quot;

Because software has this weird status where you increasingly don&#x27;t own a perpetual use right to the copy of the code you bought, and can have it revoked for reasons that have nothing to do with the purchase agreement. What if one day in the not too distant the electrical system on your car stopped working because an auto software update from that vendor (not the company that sold you the car perhaps) detected your name was on a DB of no-service-updates, and there was a critical big patched?

I&#x27;m not clear what software has to do with this. It&#x27;s happening across all industries, here&#x27;s a good roundup of a bunch of other examples:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dailycaller.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;china-censorship-daryl-morey-american-companies&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dailycaller.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;china-censorship-daryl-mo...</a>Is software special in this case somehow?

I wish local instances of SaaS were more common. As a consumer it doesn&#x27;t fill me with glee that a company used cutting edge APIs and integrations that are hosted all over the place. It fills me with concern about their stability and I have to entirely forget about data security. Who knows where it ends up these days. Both physically and in administrative terms, on globally distributed servers and regarding which companies or countries have access to it.

This is not limited to closed software.
Remember the Chef developer who got all political and deleted his github.
This is the new norm in software it appears.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2019&#x2F;09&#x2F;20&#x2F;chef_roasted_for_ice_dealings&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2019&#x2F;09&#x2F;20&#x2F;chef_roasted_for_ic...</a>Luckily it was something that could be easily remedied.

&gt; It&#x27;s only a matter of time until it&#x27;s a critical piece of software that can cripple a nation or beleaguer it&#x27;s people.Hopefully this pushes more people to use open source software.

The US could refuse to talk to them by adjusting the routes to their IP ranges, that&#x27;s about it. Everyone else that wants to talk to China could still do it, provided they make sure their routes for Chinese IPs do not go trough the US (obviously hard to do for a number of American residents, or some countries). This would still be circumventable trough a VPN that brings packet outside of the denied routing area.

If the current administration is serious about the trade war, sanctions, etc. against China (which seems the case), I have to imagine that someone has thought about what it would take to cut off China from the rest of the Internet.Obviously the fallout from something like this would be incredible, and I&#x27;m not advocating for it, but... do we even have the technical capability to do something like this? With the Internet being designed to be resilient, what would it actually take to do this? Can it be done by electronic means rather than by cutting cables &#x2F; bombing ingress points?They&#x27;re already quite isolated by the great firewall, but it seems like cutting off everything at once could still be a powerful splash of cold water to the face. It&#x27;s certainly not going to happen piecemeal when most companies are this spineless.

I just sold a video game disc for 3x what I paid for it because the company that made it went under, so it&#x27;s no longer downloadable on any streaming service (XBL, PSN, Steam, etc)...Legality-induced Digital Dark Ages. :-)

Is it safe to say we&#x27;re in the middle of the Software Wars? The headlines have been littered with stories like this lately. From major open source contributors taking down their projects, to Apple, Adobe, and Blizzard.It&#x27;s only a matter of time until it&#x27;s a critical piece of software that can cripple a nation or beleaguer it&#x27;s people.If you&#x27;re looking for positives, maybe this will finally force people to rethink digital ownership.

Allow me to indulge in the slightly spammy repost of relevant comments I made yesterday:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21180623" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21180623</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21180714" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21180714</a>It&#x27;s important that we clarify what the word &quot;Democracy&quot; means in our language, and whether to accept or reject the fact that its current use is tragically removed from its original meaning: it used to describe a concept, it&#x27;s now simply a label with no intrinsinc meaning.

People seem to be really surprised that capitalism doesn’t equal freedom. Time to wake up. Free world is in decline. Democracies of today are mostly facades to a more-less controlled societies. Sure, people can vote, but what happens after that? The accountability and controlling mechanisms have been in erosion for years now. Even the EU legislation, once a model of democracy, is now so far from the individual citizen that it’s often difficult to understand why Brussels is voting on certain laws.It used to be that free press kept close tabs on those in power. Well, thanks to the Internet it got very easy to attack the press and very hard for the press to stay profitable. We are heading towards a cliff and hopefully we will create a better system after that. But man, it will hurt to fall.

It was never possible without &quot;admin&quot; intervention. That whole inccident was NPM&#x27;s sole responsibility.

Not sure how npm works in detail, doesn&#x27;t it pull directly from devs&#x27; repositories? In that case can&#x27;t the devs just publish an update that breaks everything?

Doesn&#x27;t the code still technically belong to you? Can&#x27;t you submit a takedown request?

The NPM fiasco should no longer be possibleIf you want to unpublish a package after 72 hours have passed, contact npm Support. For more information about why we don’t allow users to unpublish packages after 72 hours, see our unpublish policy.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.npmjs.com&#x2F;unpublishing-packages-from-the-registry" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.npmjs.com&#x2F;unpublishing-packages-from-the-regist...</a>

We detached this subthread from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21190597" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21190597</a> and marked it off-topic.

What we need is a JS developer to take down an important package from NPM in protest, thus breaking the Internet again.

Fortunately the games mentioned don’t require any money other than the initial upfront cost, hence the protest. Protesting could also vastly raise queue times, making the experience i enjoyable for many.But I agree, I’ll never spend another $ on anything blizzard unless they take a different stand on the issue.

Or, you know, gamers need to grow some moral principles and stop giving companies like this money. I already didn&#x27;t like where Blizzard was going, this seals it for me. I&#x27;m not giving them any more money.

This is really unfortunate. I don’t game a ton, but when I do I pretty much only play Starcraft or Overwatch. Long time fan of the GSL as well.I know it’s nothing but a drop in the bucket but I will no longer support Blizzard - time to find another game.Perhaps we should organize a day of protest across all blizzard games.I think it’s pretty telling that I don’t feel comfortable posting this on my main account.

As usual, Stallman is right about software.

Not &quot;in Blizzard’s sole discretion&quot;.

That&#x27;s why it&#x27;s only fair we as users uphold the same rules by immediately severing any ties, present and future, with Blizzard. The rules are perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

&gt; offends a portion or group of the publicSurely their own actions just offended &quot;a portion or group of the public&quot;.

Opposing communist takeover of a free society apparently violates the following:&gt; Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image

This is just asking for a variation of Streisand effect. Now everyone will comment about Hong Kong, whether they care about it or not. And Blizzard will relent eventually, after much gnashing of teeth.

This is China’s soft power, restricting access to its economy to erode away the freedom of speech. How long before the chilling effect of criticising China start to affect those outside because the corporations depend too much on the Chinese economy for their survival?There needs to be a law to prevent corporations from enforcing political censorship on behalf of another nation.

It is “Pooh” with an H not a P at the end.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Winnie-the-Pooh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Winnie-the-Pooh</a>

5&gt; Vans removes innocuous custom shoe design <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;style&#x2F;article&#x2F;vans-hong-kong-intl-hnk-scli&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;style&#x2F;article&#x2F;vans-hong-kong-intl-hnk-sc...</a>

CCTV just banned the NBA because Adam Silver defended Morey&#x27;s free speech and refused to punish him.

- 2009 Red Dawn remake originally filmed to use China as the invaders but was edited to use North Korea afterwards [0]
- Apparently the same thing was done for the 2011 game Homefront [0][0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.latimes.com&#x2F;entertainment&#x2F;la-et-china-red-dawn-20110316-story.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.latimes.com&#x2F;entertainment&#x2F;la-et-china-red-dawn-2...</a>

&gt; 2&gt; NBA issued an apology for an owner showing Hong Kong support and China stopped NBA broadcasts.The NBA has not issued an apology to China: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chicago.suntimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;8&#x2F;20904593&#x2F;nba-china-commissioner-adam-silver-no-apology" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chicago.suntimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;8&#x2F;20904593&#x2F;nba-china-co...</a>

There&#x27;s also South Park being banned in China because of an episode that depicted the way everyone tries to please the Chinese government. Oh the irony.

So far I&#x27;ve noticed:1&gt; New Top Gun Movie removed a patch on Tom Cruises 
jacketdue to Chinese funding.2&gt; NBA issued an apology for an owner showing Hong Kong
 support and China stopped NBA broadcasts.3&gt; Blizzard4&gt; Apple Hides Taiwans Flag emojiSounds trivial but they&#x27;re the tip of the iceberg for censoring freedom of expression based on a DICTATOR&#x27;s whim.Xi &quot;Winnie The Poop&quot; is an autocrat and once he sealed his grip on power and lifted term limits.The fact is, the people are fighting a restriction on their freedom, in order to benefit the powerful.This is a tale as old as humanity itself.This is also what I fear will happen to America if we&#x27;re not careful.I think we need to be united in standing up against restrictions on the freedom of expression.

&gt; we&#x27;ve largely coalesced around the idea that insult should be defined by the insulted.I know that is not an opinion I share. I suspect it is not one many people share at all. I think it&#x27;s just the one of a vocal minority on the far left.Ideas have a place in the open. If they&#x27;re going to die somewhere, it needs to be in public discourse.

&gt; &quot;a new normal that entire people can have their &quot;feelings hurt&quot; (what?) by mere non-insulting opinions, and it tries to make it a new normal that all actors should censor any undesirable or potentially undesirable opinion&quot;Umm... yeah... but... oh boy... okay look, I AGREE with your ultimate conclusion here. But I think you might need a new rubric which with to argue it. Because as-written, this calls to mind half of all social interaction within United States culture today.To differentiate these things, you have to tap dance around the &quot;non-insulting opinions&quot; qualifier. Which is kind of a mess, because we&#x27;ve largely coalesced around the idea that insult should be determined by the insulted.I do think there&#x27;s a great (and obvious) point here. I&#x27;d love to see it phrased differently, because that might be helpful more broadly.

&gt; Once the pros leave Hearthstone for another game, Hearthstone will die. THAT will get Blizzard&#x27;s attention.Why would Blizzard care, if they are still making money on the other games people left Heathstone for?

&gt; Then we have to boycott Hearthstone. While the current case is neither surprising nor substantially important, it is important because of principle.Boycott the Hearthstone pro players&#x2F;streamers.Blizzard won&#x27;t notice the money from a couple hundred people going away. The streamers&#x2F;pros on the other hand will most certainly notice even a couple of people going away and will leave Hearthstone to rot.Once the pros leave Hearthstone for another game, Hearthstone will die. THAT will get Blizzard&#x27;s attention.

Might I propose the following idea:Suspending a player in order to curtail their speech because of China&#x27;s politically motivated demands is, itself, a political act.

That&#x27;s not what&#x27;s happening. People are being de-platformed for carrying out or inciting harassment and violence. The only thing that&#x27;s changed is that we&#x27;ve decided that it&#x27;s unacceptable to hide behind passive speech when it&#x27;s obvious to a reasonable observer what you mean to do. E.g., &quot;I heard there might be a fire in this theater!&quot;, &quot;My friend says there&#x27;s a fire in this theater!&quot;, &quot;It&#x27;d be great if someone yelled &#x27;Fire!&#x27; in this theater,&quot; might not get you criminally prosecuted, but it&#x27;s perfectly reasonable for a theater to ban you after the nth time that you&#x27;ve made an alarmist reference to fire on their premises.

I agree with your position but it is at odd with the general de-platforming movement. Where banning people from platforms where they can express their opinion seems to be now an acceptable form of political discourse.

<pre><code> &gt;boycott Hearthstone</code></pre>
Sure no problem! I&#x27;m still boycotting blizzard because of how they handled the bnetd situation.

Retribution against the kneelers was met with a ton of protest if I recall correctly. So it&#x27;s a great example of why, yes, we should protest this too.

I think it’s a bit different. In this case you’re economically punishing the responsible party - not trying to raise awareness (make a scene).I can silently stop playing Hearthstone and the effect would be felt. I’m not wasting other people’s time or breaking a contract.In regards to the kneeling specifically, my impression was it was free publicity to the players. Honestly, looked like they were taking advantage of the situation, a way to get free press for themselves. I know I wasn’t the only person who felt this. That’s likely part of the reason they were canned.

Honestly, you&#x27;ve changed my mind right here about the NFL issue by putting it into this perspective.I always thought Kaepernick had the right to kneel, but that the NFL had the right to bench the player as well.I thought the President, being a US citizen, also had the right to be raucous about the issue as many politicians were, as long as it didn&#x27;t extend into actual executive action.The reason people in the US might find this action offensive (the reason I do) is because it supports a communist government and I&#x27;m sick of US-based MNCs cow-tailing to China instead of taking a principled stand for Western values, but that should include the NFL supporting Kaepernick&#x27;s right to free expression as well.Perhaps the same reasoning can extend to so-called &quot;cancel culture&quot; of people getting fired for expressing their private opinions online.

I suspect that few people who dislike Blizzard&#x27;s response like the NFL&#x27;s response. They are similar cases, but the first one was punishing an American, only seen by Americans to applease an American audience. The HK issue is punishing someone, seen globally, to appease a foreign audience.

&gt; In our society, it still matters that people can tolerate other opinions.Who is &quot;our&quot; in this? If you mean USA, then are you sure about your claim? Eg: &quot;Guy chooses to kneel on the field because kids were getting shot, guy gets canned.&quot;. How is that significantly different than what is happening in this case?

I&#x27;m not giving them a red cent. They can be anti-democratic on someone else&#x27;s dime.

Boycotts usually don&#x27;t achieve anything (historically most boycotts have had no effect whatsoever), so it&#x27;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 Hearthstone and its parent company as long as possible. Public shaming tends to bring more valid results.

Yep:&gt;tries to make it a new normal that entire people can have their &quot;feelings hurt&quot; (what?) by mere non-insulting opinions, and it tries to make it a new normal that all actors should censor any undesirable or potentially undesirable opinion.

The idea of &quot;cancel culture&quot; is generally surrounding boycotting people for opinions unrelated to what they are doing. Blizzard suspending the Hearthstone player could be considered &quot;cancel culture,&quot; although I don&#x27;t really think it fits super well, but boycotting Blizzard is protesting a specific action that happened recently, not an irrelevant opinion or statement they have apologized for. It is standing up for the ideals of free speech, not shutting them down.

I agree. What is Blizzard going to do, cancel Hearthstone esports?

Here&#x27;s a list of some of the personalities I follow:@TrumpSC
@Kripparrian
@G2ThijsNone of them have spoken out. Perhaps they would if asked.

That would be the equivalent of asking them to quit (Or rather get fired from) their jobs. They aren’t paid well enough on average to do this easily.I hope they do stand up for what they see as right, though. I just understand why they might not.

A better solution would be for all hearthstone pro players to start talking about hong kong on solidarity.

Would &quot;having links to the chinese government&quot; make the cut for this list? because if so, you can add Tencent, and by extension Epic games, Reddit and Riot games.

You started a list about musical performers in China?[EDIT: I see, it was deliberate wordplay from South Park. Sorry!]

To that end, I&#x27;ve started a list on github<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;caffeine-overload&#x2F;bandinchina" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;caffeine-overload&#x2F;bandinchina</a>

I just cancelled my WoW subscription.  It did ask for reasons; in the free-form text box, I just typed &#x27;Hong Kong&#x27;.

It seems account deletion is mysteriously unavailable at the moment for me due to &#x27;too many attempts&#x27; and now my 2nd factor verification had been blocked :|EDIT: nm, was on the wrong subdomain. Account removal requested &amp; all my blizzard games gone. I hope they&#x27;ll ask me why.

Doubt that would be justiciable in most countries, other wise you could sack a Premier league player because they supported a particular political party.Gaming companies cant set up pro leagues and treat players as if it was still football in the 1950&#x27;s

I disagree but don&#x27;t think you should be downvoted.I wouldn&#x27;t say it is explicitly stated in the rules – the rule they cite prohibits &quot;Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image.&quot;Which is basically a catch-all for, if we decide we don&#x27;t like it, we can prohibit it.

&gt; There is a difference between tolerating Blitzchung&#x27;s opinions and letting him hijack an interview to make a political statement that has nothing to do with Hearthstone. I mean, he appeared wearing goggles and a gas mask, and the first (an only) thing he said was &quot;Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times&quot; in a post-game interview.Wow, that is really offensive. I can see why they would ban him for a year for saying such horrible things.

It happened during an event sponsored by Blizzard. Player may have their opinions but they are paid (through prizes) and broadcast by Blizzard. It means that Blizzard gets to set the rules about what can be said. And in case it wasn&#x27;t obvious, it is explicitly stated in the competition rules.There is a difference between tolerating Blitzchung&#x27;s opinions and letting him hijack an interview to make a political statement that has nothing to do with Hearthstone. I mean, he appeared wearing goggles and a gas mask, and the first (an only) thing he said was &quot;Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times&quot; in a post-game interview.

&gt; Then we have to boycott Hearthstone.No, we need to boycott Blizzard.

&gt;Then we have to boycott HearthstoneYou mean Blizzard?

&gt; If you want to object to censorship, great. But if you do, you need to do it as a general principleWhy? I think it&#x27;s perfectly reasonable to say &quot;Blizzard, you should ban people who make racist statements from your tournaments, but you should allow people whose who voice support for pro-democracy protestors to compete. And if you decide not to do that, I won&#x27;t watch your tourneys or buy your games.&quot;Are you saying that I am a hypocrite for liking the contents of some speech but not others, and acting on that preference? Note that no one is saying the government should use its monopoly on force to ban speech - we are talking about private action.

&gt; If you want to object to censorship, great. But if you do, you need to do it as a general principle, and that means tolerating speech you don&#x27;t like too.Sorry, but I don&#x27;t see a world where supporting open, self-proclaimed Nazis is the same as supporting advocacy for democracy.I can believe that we should drown out the Nazis and amplify the voice of democracy. That doesn&#x27;t make me a hypocrite. That makes me someone with an ethos.

I agree with this sentiment in the general.I think people are just trying and failing to voice their actual feelings on the matter.You could respect Blizzard&#x27;s right to suspend the player for his opinion. And fully acknowledge that it is them showing him the door and all that.You could also believe that Blizzard is on the wrong side in this conflict and withdraw your support based on that.So you wouldn&#x27;t be boycotting Blizzard for censorship so much as for supporting something you find wrong.People complaining about &quot;free speech&quot; and &quot;censorship&quot; are complaining about the wrong thing here.

Give me a break. When companies censor speech HN likes, it&#x27;s all about how we have to boycott companies to preserve our society. When it&#x27;s speech HN doesn&#x27;t like, it&#x27;s all about how censorship is actually good and that companies are just &quot;showing people the door&quot; via their freedom of association.People around here need to make up their minds. If you want to object to censorship, great. But if you do, you need to do it as a general principle, and that means tolerating speech you don&#x27;t like too. You don&#x27;t get to just lean on freedom of speech selectively.The hypocrisy of supporting corporate censorship against things you like and opposing it against things you don&#x27;t --- well, it&#x27;s breathtaking.

The first thing I did when hearing this news is look into how I could delete my Hearthsone account. This sets such a dangerous precedent if Blizzard gets away with no consequences.

From &#x2F;r&#x2F;hearthstone&gt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;truth.bahamut.com.tw&#x2F;s01&#x2F;201910&#x2F;acd1e702747963b5e6d65eca7f02b973.JPG" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;truth.bahamut.com.tw&#x2F;s01&#x2F;201910&#x2F;acd1e702747963b5e6d6...</a> I&#x27;m a heartstone player from Taiwan. Just here to share information from another aspect. The picture above is the comment from the official hearthstone account on China social website. (the V means verified) translation:We strongly condemn the player and the casters on what happened in the game last weekend ,and we firmly DISAPPROVE people to state their own political POV in any tournament.The player will be banned from the tournament,and the casters will never be granted the chance to cast any official tournament from now on. Besides,we will firmly PROTECT THE PRIDE OF THE COUNTRY just like what we always do.——Remember Blizzard is also the company that prominently feature Pride during many Overwatch events on western streams - but didn’t show the same content on Eastern streams.I’m deleting anything I have of Blizzard-Activision not because it’ll hurt their bottom line, but so I can know I’m doing the right thing for this particular situation.

Anyone that lives in a democratic country with legally protected civil rights.

You may need to attach scopes to &quot;we&quot; and &quot;our society.&quot; I assume you&#x27;re referring to Americans and the United States?Blizzard&#x2F;Activision is a multinational corporation. Incorporated in the US, but beholden to more cultural norms than just the US ones.

They&#x27;re owned by Activision so all Activision products if you&#x27;re going to do it properly.

Not just Hearthstone, but all Blizzard products.

Exactly this.I hope that what people see is that we&#x27;ve been in a cultural war with China for 20+ years. Now that the Chinese market is big enough, Western companies are dropping any standards they have to keep access to the market.Individual companies are not going to fight this war.I don&#x27;t like Trump as much as anyone, but when Trump adds some tariff on Chinese goods everyone goes batshit insane in the US. The Chinese government almost every day shuts some company or product off from access to the Chinese market for not doing something they say. But until the Hong Kong protests, it seems like no one cared. I hope now that it&#x27;s LITERALLY, blantantly, and obviously about freedoms and human rights -- it&#x27;s enough to get people to care. China should lose access to the WTO if it forces any company anywhere (including in China) to censor anything in order to gain or keep access to its market. End of discussion.

We need to keep a list of when this happensI would love to see a list like this.Unfortunately, it would contain the names of virtually every airline. But I would still like to see it.

There are 1000 reasons to boycott this game. It&#x27;s one more on the list.

Not sure if you&#x27;re talking about here or somewhere Blizzardy, but as far as here goes: you&#x27;re right—religious flamewar isn&#x27;t allowed, you&#x27;ve posted such comments before, and we ban accounts that do that. Comments like these, which users correctly flagged, would probably have gotten you banned here if we had seen them:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20646888" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20646888</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20645480" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20645480</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20662370" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20662370</a>

I have made similar set of argument, but against a religion. That an archaic religious dogma is winning over 21st century progressive principles. I got shut and banned for displaying something-phobia.

If they had just kicked him out of the tournament, I&#x27;d definitely be on that side of things. I don&#x27;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&#x27;s hard to see how it could have happened if not for fear of China.

It more than &quot;looks like&quot; Blizzard is taking China&#x27;s side. They have outright said that they are in their chinese language statement&gt; We strongly condemn the player and the casters on what happened in the game last weekend ,and we firmly DISAPPROVE people to state their own political POV in any tournament. The player will be banned from the tournament,and the casters will never be granted the chance to cast any official tournament from now on. Besides,we will firmly PROTECT THE PRIDE OF THE COUNTRY just like what we always do.(translation taken from another comment on HN, google finds lots of sources with similar translations, including news articles from reputable papers)

&gt;I think Blizzard has a legitimate &quot;time and place&quot; argument here.Blizzard pushed Pride hard when it suited them to do so. What is the proper time and place exactly?It would seem that only certain political opinions are ok and those would be the type that won&#x27;t hurt their bottom line.

According to arstechnica translated he shouted &quot;Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;blizzard-bans-pro-hearthstone-gamer-for-statement-supporting-hong-kong&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;blizzard-bans-pr...</a>I&#x27;d agree with a slap on the wrist. Like $500 fine or something. But forfeiting all winners and 12 month ban is insane.Seems like Blizzard is pandering to China because they don&#x27;t want locked out of the market.Shame on them for enjoying democracy in their own country (US) but assisting with suppressing it in other countries for their own profit.

&gt;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 &quot;time and place&quot; argument here. They shouldn&#x27;t regulate competitors speech across the board but I think it&#x27;s reasonable to mandate that interviews associated with official events focus on Hearthstone and stay away from controversial topics.Of course Blizzard really stepped into it by citing the &quot;brings you into public disrepute&quot; rule. That makes them look like their taking China&#x27;s side. And this is a full on Streisand effect. The banning brought way more attention (at least in the West) than the initial interview did. Few of us would have even known it happened without hte banning.

1. Chinese government didn&#x27;t involve this. It&#x27;s pure Blizzard&#x27;s behavior.
2. As you said, you can boycott Hearthstone or Blizzard as the consequence of their actions
3. Meanwhile, Chinese players can also boycott them as well as the consequence of Blizzard&#x27;s ignorance
4. So at the end, it&#x27;s Blizzard&#x27;s decision based on their interest

Yeah, it&#x27;s a tricky situation. This could be dismissed with the phrase &quot;freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences&quot; that gets bandied about when certain people get deplatformed.By going after Blizzard for suspending this guy for his speech, you&#x27;re saying that you care more about the targets than the action. That certain actions are ok as long as we&#x27;re hurting the right people.So that&#x27;s what they actually have to defend. They can&#x27;t hide behind &quot;free speech&quot; now that it&#x27;s speech they support. They have to make the case as to why this speech should get a pass while other speech should not.

Supporting HK protests is very different from falsely claiming that the hiring bar was lowered for women (it said this in the doc, I know enough people at Google who participate in hiring committee to know that it was a false statement).

&gt; Let us not put burden of being politically correct on free market corporations.Isn&#x27;t that what blizz just did? They were worried about political correctness so they banned someone?&gt; his opinions were considered against the current acceptable position on the matter, and then he was banned, I am sure everyone would have applauded blizzard.Why are you so sure of this?

&gt; Let us not put burden of being politically correct on free market corporations.They seem to have picked up the torch themselves on this one.

Would you oppose firing of James Damore as well?Look I understand that we need to have free expression and free speech. Absolutely. But a business wants to protect itself from negative political reputation. If the gamer was talking about say LGBT rights, and his opinions were considered against the current acceptable position on the matter, and then he was banned, I am sure everyone would have applauded blizzard.Let us not put burden of being politically correct on free market corporations.

i&#x27;m on board with a boycott of blizzard and also activision.we can&#x27;t continue with appeasement of a totalitarian state bent on controlling the discourse of the world if we want to claim that we are a democracy.unless we&#x27;re willing to lose money to stay true to our ideals, our ideals aren&#x27;t real whatsoever.

&gt;Then we have to boycott HearthstoneHonestly never even heard of it so that&#x27;s pretty easy then.

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 &quot;feelings hurt&quot; (what?) by mere non-insulting opinions, and it tries to make it a new normal that all actors should censor any undesirable or potentially undesirable opinion.If that is indeed the way, then our society and the discourse therein is no longer free, and the CCP has won.We need to keep these firms in our mind. We need to keep a list of when this happens, and we need to sanction this as best as we can. Similarly, anyone standing up to censorship should have our support.I can be pro HK, or I can be pro China, and I can voice opinions because doing so either way is an equally valid form of free expression. But it can not be that one side gets pre-emptively censored to appease the CCP, or any actor with the power to DEFINE the bar of what is reasonable expression of opinions.

&gt;&gt; Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West.Of course it&#x27;s not, but you&#x27;re missing the point. They&#x27;re simply taking advantage of this incoherence in the current western value.

Well thank God then that wasn&#x27;t my argument.What I&#x27;m saying is, China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it&#x27;s own political censorship (edit: in the West).

...it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.Saying it didn&#x27;t make it true. Do us all the favor of a more convincing argument.Besides, are we really talking about censorship in &quot;the East&quot;? Blizzard is based in California.

That would be utter nonsense, yes, if it was what the parent claimed. But as I understood the parent it was about enforcement of eastern censorship in the West. I found it a quite interesting observation (relatively unrelated to modern liberal views).

This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West.That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Online_shaming#Tim_Hunt_controversy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Online_shaming#Tim_Hunt_contro...</a>

Can you give an example of what you mean with &quot;oppression of freedom of speech on account of hurt feelings&quot;? Because I wasn&#x27;t aware that such oppression were ongoing. To me it sounds like a fringe theory spread by those who oppose hate speech laws.

They (China and foreign dictators) find the openings they can in Western society and echo those narratives that are convenient for them. This is a very good analysis.

Yep. All the &quot;it&#x27;s a private company, they can ban whoever they want&quot; arguments have perfectly primed us to the current state of affairs. Just another reminder that speech you don&#x27;t like should be protected before it will inevitably result in speech you do like being suppressed.

&gt;They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of &quot;hurt feelings&quot; - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes (&quot;hurt Chinese feelings&quot; a.k.a. political censorship).You have this reversed. Blue checkmarks learned these tactics from the original Maosists and Stalinists.

China is very smart. They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of &quot;hurt feelings&quot; - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes (&quot;hurt Chinese feelings&quot; a.k.a. political censorship).Literally noone could have seen this coming. &#x2F;sedit: XCabbage better explains what I was trying to say. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21191253" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21191253</a>

People forget the context of the uproar and protests against Brendan. Indeed he was the lover of freedom that sent in political donations to take freedom away from others - namely, those not like him.  It&#x27;s interesting to see how people, especially champions of freedom of expression, can compartmentalize that mentality so easily and justify it to oneself. Those people deserve to be called out. Calling them out is also something freedom affords.

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&#x27;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&#x27;ll refrain from giving any specific examples in order to avoid starting that debate again, but I think most of us can remember that time in fair detail.)

Depends upon what freedoms we consider freedoms. Today, do you support any laws that would deny people what others may consider freedom? For example, supporting age limits on activities. If you support people under 18 being unable to vote, are you not supporting taking away their freedom to vote?Once you strip away the modern day cultural norms of what is acceptable freedoms and not, and begin to consider other arguments and social views as to what counts as freedom, you find most anyone out there fights to strip freedom from others. Sometimes under the guise of protecting them, but not always.The same people condemning this person from the freedoms he opposed likely support removing freedoms from others for ageist reasons.

Was that the same lover of freedom that campaigned to take away the freedom of others?

Unfortunately no, I get reminded every single update when something else which has worked for fifteen years suddenly goes wrong. Mozilla has gutted themselves politically.

If you look carefully the controversial discussion wasn&#x27;t started by me but by the comment Steltek wrote below my post. I think you do owe me the courtesy of recognizing this and in that case detaching that comment might have been the right course of action instead of throwing threats towards me.It is relevant in the sense that in the sciences department (FOR NOW) we don&#x27;t judge scientific discovery or papers by their ethnicity or political opinion, but rather on the basis of their scientific merit. Although this too seems to be quickly fading away, judging from the daily comments I&#x27;m seeing on my Facebook stream.

Surely not another flamewar about that. Would you please review the site guidelines, paying special attention to this one?&quot;Eschew flamebait. Don&#x27;t introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>We detached this subthread from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21190597" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21190597</a> and marked it very off-topic.

Have we all forgotten when Mozilla replaced the CTO with a long history of internet freedom work to replace him with a marketing director and the disaster that followed?Are we going to keep trampling on all our freedoms in the name of ... freedom(?) and then blame it all on China?EDIT: I knew some people were going to try to spin it into something it wasn&#x27;t.

It was the CEOs attitude towards gamers and his derogatory comments about them as well as the way Activision treats&#x2F;treated its developers. There was a lot of controversy around these issues and after reading quite an in depth article about it around 10 years ago I&#x27;ve avoided buying anything developed or published by Acti-Blizzard.

Isn&#x27;t that the guy who hates gamers? It wasn&#x27;t difficult to figure out why people dislike him [1][1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bobby_Kotick#Business_strategy_controversy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bobby_Kotick#Business_strategy...</a>

What was it about Activision that caused you to boycott them?

It&#x27;s a shame but I feel like the majority of gamers won&#x27;t care. They&#x27;ll either be ignorant of this or they&#x27;ll just shrug and continue playing. I boycotted Activision and by proxy Blizzard when Activision acquired them a long time ago but their continuing success shows I&#x27;m part of an extremely tiny minority.

Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments