Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

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 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.

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.

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

>hide behind passive speech when it's obvious to a reasonable observer

This is so overloaded with subjectivity, and it's the main problem of why regulating speech remains problematic and dangerous.

I can apply this statement to anything and validate what I claim is the baseline for objectivity.