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2525 points hownottowrite | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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alimbada ◴[] No.21191021[source]
It's a shame but I feel like the majority of gamers won't care. They'll either be ignorant of this or they'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'm part of an extremely tiny minority.
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JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.21191321[source]
> I feel like the majority of gamers won't care

The simultaneity of the NBA and now Blizzard so publicly siding with Beijing may elevate this out of the realm of commercial issues (subject to boycotts) into a political one.

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cabalamat ◴[] No.21191430[source]
It should do. The West needs to decide whether it is going to stand for China being able to silence criticism of it in the West, or not.
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shadowgovt ◴[] No.21193198[source]
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 unprecedented, but the precedents are very tightly bound (and often tied up in a justification based on use of very finite public resources, such as broadcast airwaves).

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JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.21193374[source]
> 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 opinions connected to Hong Kong or Taiwan’s proto-democratic and democratic systems. (This would probably also require Congress recognise Taiwan’s sovereignty, which after Hong Kong looks necessary.)

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1. shadowgovt ◴[] No.21193973[source]
"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.