Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

And no, they aren't. The two things may look superficially similar but Chinese political censorship is much, much older and the process but which it is done hasn't changed in a long time.

Ehh... But how old is enforcement of Chinese political censorship in the West?

> Chinese political censorship is much, much older

Since 20th century, isn’t it? Or are there any historical sources confirming that political censorship across provinces of China under Qing dynasty was comparable to the one currently under CCP?

Yeah, mid-20th century. Admittedly "long time" was pretty vague!

My point is that their process is not really being influenced by the so-called "cancel culture" of the last few years.

Blizzard is partially owned by a Chinese company. They're using money, not cancel culture.

The only reason Blizzard was legally able to engage in this punishment - which involved stripping the player of his winnings - was that there's a player handbook banning offensive conduct and including this as a penalty. If that provision had not existed, China and Blizzard could not have used it. And the only political faction in the west who demand such codes of conduct are the SJWs.

When tomp says that China coopted the machinery of censorship laid by SJWs for its own purposes, he's entirely correct.

No, it's the PR weasel words that have existed in sports contracts from the beginning of broadcast media

> 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

Citation needed. I don't know the sports world, but I know in my bubble, those "weasel words" are something that only SJWs would approve of. If this sort of thing existed in sports contracts in the pre-SJW era, that is an interesting point that to my mind fractures tomp's narrative... but it seems unlikely to me and so far you've simply asserted it without evidence.

I note that the exact phrase "offends a portion or group of the public" has only ever been used in Blizzard's rules as far as I can tell (you can use a date-filtered Google search to confirm; prior to today there are only a handful of results, all Blizzard-related). So at the very least, they didn't lift it verbatim from sports contracts. If there used to be equivalent language in sports contracts a decade ago, I'd like to see it.

Free speech was once valued in USA. In that context this wouldn't have happened. Now that freedom of speech is no longer valued, this sort of thing can happen.

Now I state for the record that I know these are the censorious actions of a private firm, not those of the USA federal government. It is of course possible to value speech outside a strict 1A framework. In previous decades, many Americans did so value free speech.

How do you think Kaepernick was benched and then fired, or do you think that the NFL is filled with a bunch of SJWs who also somehow think we should all stand for the flag?

No it wasn't. The same political sphere that's now complaining about how SJWs are ruining free speech had no problems black balling a large chunk of hollywood in the 50s for their private political speech.

As far as I know:

1. Kaepernick wasn't fired. He simply wasn't signed by anyone team after his contract with the 49ers ended.

2. It's a matter of factual controversy whether his treatment by the NFL was affected by his advocacy at all. As far as I know, no manager has explicitly admitted to making different choices about how to deal with him based on his kneeling.

3. It was never suggested by anybody that Kaepernick's kneeling might be a breach of his contract.

4. Kaepernick was not denied his pay for matches he'd already played in as a consequence of his kneeling.

Assuming I am correct on the facts, there is, at the very least, a significant difference in degree between that case and this one. Do you claim that anything I say above is wrong?

It also seems relevant here that basically all coverage I saw of Kaepernick's case - from the nearly-exclusively right-wing commentators I follow - was harshly critical of the minority on the right who were calling for him to be punished. By contrast, I have never seen anyone on the left criticise speech codes or corporate censorship. I do not think it is reasonable to try to draw an equivalence between the right and left on these issues by comparing the positions of a minority on the right, heavily criticised by other right-wingers, with the position of an unchallenged hegemony on the left. There is a real asymmetry here, both in terms of what the majority position of each coalition is and the extent to which they actually punish the speech they disfavour in practice.

The people who regard 1950s Hollywood as an example of malfeasance are the same people who are currently doing the exact same thing to the text industry with the polarity reversed. They have no moral standing whatsoever to complain. If this weren't my industry, the hypocrisy would be hilarious.

As long as you get people fired from their jobs for having the wrong opinions about social issues in the US, you have no right to demand that companies not censor what the Chinese censors dislike. Now do you realize the value of free speech as a general principle?

You're right, Kaepernick had an option on his contract for an additional year, but he declined that option and decided to test the free market because he wanted a guaranteed starter job and he wasn't getting that in San Francisco.

And I'd like to add that the deal with Kaepernick isn't that no team would sign him. It's not even if it was due to his political stance. Kaepernick's entire beef was whether or not the league was colluding to keep him from being signed.

To put it as simply as I can: It's ok that teams like the Patriots who don't need a quarterback didn't sign him. It's ok if a team didn't sign him because of his opinions. It's ok is no team at all wants to sign him.

What isn't ok is if hypothetically the Browns and the Bills agree that neither will sign Kaepernick. You don't even need all 32 teams in on it, 2 would have been enough.

I admit I tend to reflexively look down on comments that throw around terms like "SJW" unironically. But the rest of your comment belies some of the most profound ignorance I've seen in awhile. Did you Google "offends a portion or group of the public", and, finding no literal matches prior to GamerGate circa 2014, conclude that moral clauses did not simply exist before the "pre-SJW era"? Do you believe it was SJWs that forced the U.S. Olympic Committee to punish Tommie Smith and John Carlos for holding up their fists on the Olympic podium?

> The USOC issued an apologetic statement condemning the athletes’ “untypical exhibitionism,” which violated “the basic standards of good manners and sportsmanship, which are so highly valued in the United States.” [0]

Morals clauses for athletes have existed since for athletes at least 1922, according to Wikipedia [1].

Also, there's an argument to be had over the unbacked assertion that "SJWs" were the reason behind the "offends a portion or group of the public", as opposed to, the actual thing that that clause is now being used to punish. You know what else happened around the same time as the "SJW era"? China becoming a world-dominant economic and political force.

[0] https://www.outsideonline.com/2402740/john-carlos-tommie-smi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morals_clause

If Kaepernick's advocacy didn't adversely affect "his treatment by the NFL" in any way "at all", then isn't it strange coincidence that the NFL went out of its way to pass a rule banning kneeling during the anthem after the controversy? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2018/05/24...

Seems strange for the NFL to risk a First Amendment controversy with that rule if the NFL were truly unperturbed by Kaepernick's advocacy.

Which era are you referring to? I remember Sinead O'Connor having her career eviscerated after she protested child abuse in the Catholic Church on SNL, so it couldn't be the 1990s. I'm assuming it's not the 2000s (Dixie Chicks, among others). So the 80s? The 70s?

I don't think the poster was suggesting that 'cancel culture' has affected the chinese political process. I believe they were suggesting that it has created a means for their censorship to be pushed in the West. In so many words; Blizzard can say they don't want to offend the Chinese and use that as their excuse to support this kind of censorship.

Or... there's a difference between the government enforcing deplatforming, and people voting with their wallets and companies reading the political guide winds turning.

Unless you're saying that you have an issue with free association as well.

Blizzard is exercising its rights as a private company.

Blizzard is owned partially by Tencent, which is owned by the Chinese government.

Tencent owns 12% of Blizzard, and Tencent is an actual company, not a Chinese government department. Sure, the Chinese government might influence Tencent, but to say that Blizzard's action here is government censorship is so ridiculous that it amounts to a blatant lie.

Is your argument so weak that you have to just lie?

I honestly struggle to conceive of the educational history needed to conflate the long history of censorship with "SJWs". Some of the greatest works of western literature in the twentieth century directly address the concept, and the majority of texts that influence "SJWs" were incredibly subversive and likely to be banned at their time of release due to their attack on conventional power structures that had the ability to censor them (Black people voting! Women voting! Anti-religious scientific heresy! Human rights!).

This strategy of demanding proof for something that is easily discoverable through any simple google search ("history of censorship") is such an exhausting argumentative tactic.

12% is more than enough to control a publicly traded company, because speculative shareholders don't typically vote.

The Chinese view of ownership is that the CCP ultimately owns everything. For instance there are no land deeds in China, just rental agreements from the party. Tencent, as one of the largest telecommunications companies in China is very much an adjunct of the CCP.

Don't accuse someone of lying just because you don't understand the underlying facts.