OWL's CCP-friendly censorship

General Discussion
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Didn’t even think about this being an issue but when idly watching the OWL chat and I see mentions of Tiananmen Square and related topics on China’s censorship blacklist being removed by the mods…what the actual F, blizzard.

Anyone with a “it’s business, Blizzard’s job is to make money” hot take…well, I can’t keep you from posting that here, but you really ought to ask yourself why you don’t expect better from Blizzard and other corporations. Taking that to its logical extreme, are there any limits you’d support on unethical corporate behavior? Don’t bother posting here. Go read about the radium girls, swill milk, company stores, union busting, breaker boys, Dole…look at how well that stuff worked in the 1920s. (And later.)

Same to the inevitable “just don’t play, then” and the “keep your politics out of my video games” comments. Don’t bother. Let me shout into the void.

Blizzard, right now it’s convenient for your bottom line to actively enable human rights violations. It was convenient for fossil fuel companies to ignore (and actively cover up) the threat of climate change, and for tobacco companies to actively cover up the threat of tobacco, and right now it’s convenient for social media companies to actively promote “engagement” at any cost.

The US has committed its share of atrocities but I doubt Blizzard would actively go after anyone criticizing the US in chat, nor should they. Legitimate criticism of a government and its policies is not the same as racism. Tiananmen, Xianjiang, and Hong Kong are all atrocities, and the fact that Blizzard has decided that the cost of doing business in China is acceptable - actively collaborating in the cover-up and whitewashing of those atrocities - that’s just shameful.

At minimum they should stop claiming to have any values as a company. Just admit that you’ll do business with anyone who has the money, regardless of how depraved they are.

Shame on you, Blizzard.

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So wait let me see if I understand your complaint right. You are annoyed that, in a video game competition, they are blocking out chat that is wholly unrelated to the video game.

There are places where you can talk about censorship, a video game tournament where the chat is basically a spam fest of reactions and meme’s is not that place.

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Spams random unreleated stuff, cry saying its censorship when they are just removing said unreleated stuff.

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Not quite, more that they believe only things relating to the CCP are removed but not anything related to other countries (ie usa). If everything not related to the game was booted out then that would be fine. I dunno if anyone has tried tossing in stuff about other countries to see if it’s moderated away :man_shrugging:t2:

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too try and prove your point better I will post something against US to see if it gets banned, because I agree with u

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Okay, so idk if they just don’t show that your msg is deleted but neither of my msgs were deleted. However I have seen that in chat and others not because it’s not China. Idk why mine didn’t get censored

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Interesting how OP created this thread RIGHT before the Summer Showdown Grand Finals…featuring 2 China-based teams…and while WyomingMyst and I were discussing who was going to post the match discussion thread for tonight’s match…

As much as I’m trying to give OP the benefit of the doubt and hear his criticisms, the fact he’s demanding people that people “don’t bother posting” with counterarguments to his claims tells me OP is not here to hold a constructive discussion, and as such I cannot take his claims all that seriously. Throw in the fact that we are getting close to Sunday, and that makes me even more suspicious.

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If people were spamming stuff about our messy US politics, much less our actual human rights crimes, I expect Blizzard would silence them as well.

That stuff has no place in a video game event and no one is talking about it is doing so in good faith. CCP officials aren’t the ones playing and most likely aren’t among the Chinese OWL fans either, spewing hate about China’s government (however you want to wrap it up and pretend moral high ground) is only going to be heard by and hurt the innocent.

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Kinda nitpicking but okay

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I did NOT say “don’t bother with counterarguments,” I said “don’t bother posting with intellectually dishonest BS,” lol.

I said “don’t bother posting” that stuff because far too often I see “bruh it’s just a game” and “uninstall or go whine somewhere else” and “the only thing Blizz should be focusing on is making money, they’re a company not a charity.”

Do you think any of those are “constructive” discussions? I don’t think it’s fair for you to accuse me of “not trying to hold a constructive discussion” when you didn’t actually address the substance of my complaint.

It wasn’t even me posting about Tiananmen in the chat yesterday, it was some rando, and out of idle curiosity I watched that comment for a minute to see what happened. As I said originally, it didn’t even occur to me that this would be an issue…it’s a YouTube live chat for western audiences, not something actually subject to Chinese censorship laws. The people taking down that sort of comment aren’t Chinese censors, they’re Blizzard chat moderators. You know they wouldn’t do this to OWL chat comments about any other country (unless they veered into racism, but that’s a separate problem). No other country with China’s market share would just outright kick Blizzard out if they don’t toe the party line.

If Blizzard wants to moderate their chat, that’s fine. They’re a private company, that’s their right. If they want to make the claim that “only OWL-related comments will be permitted” and then enforce that, fine. (Good luck with that, they’ll get overwhelmed with spam as soon as they make a formal announcement to that effect.) Meanwhile, watch the chat for a few minutes and you’ll see ALL kinds of non-OWL-related commentary that isn’t removed.

I had no clue Sunday was any kind of event, I barely pay attention to OWL. It came up on YouTube and I clicked on it, no nefarious motive, and then I saw that happen and thought, “gee, it really sucks that this is the route Blizzard decided to go.” Would it be less “suspicious” if I’d waited a week to post this? I mean, come on.

If you have evidence that I’m wrong about Blizzard’s policies, or you have something to say other than “OP is complaining about something I don’t care about,” please, by all means.

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Because they’ve repeatedly proven that this is as “good” as they are. Companies are only as “good” as their profits motivate them to be.

Of course not. The US aren’t going to blacklist the entire company for such a thing.

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People weren’t spamming anything, it was a small number of isolated comments over…I want to say…about 10 minutes. I agree that spam is moderation-worthy in and of itself.

I also wasn’t advocating racism, or “spewing hate” against anyone.

At the exact time I was watching, the chat was also being spammed with “trans rights!” and trans flags (I don’t know why, like I said, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention). Those weren’t being deleted, nor do I think they should’ve been (unless there was some nefarious context I am missing). Does that have any more place at a video game event? Totally irrelevant to OWL (as far as I know) and totally not delete-worthy. I think I saw a transphobic comment or two being deleted. I didn’t see any outright racist comments made. Criticizing China’s government is not the same as racism.

Moreover, if anything, China itself has made it an issue worthy of connecting to OWL given the treatment of some non-Chinese players who have commented on Hong Kong, for example. I don’t think it’s “spewing hate” to have an opinion on something; unless it’s specifically in some TOS somewhere not to ever talk about anything unrelated to OWL (and again, see the previous “trans rights” spam).

It kind of sounds like your point is just that I shouldn’t care about any of this and that I’m somehow doing something wrong by complaining about it lol.

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In the end, I don’t see blizzard’s services being the most appropriate place for communication really. It should mainly be about the game for the most part and in probably most cases this tends to be what happens. People discuss characters or make silly remarks.

Its more in the domain of larger generalist platforms such as say twitter, facebook, etc. that are simply platforms for discussion without really any intended limitation on what you talk about. This is where I would be more concerned about censorship on a larger scale.

Now, if it was someone’s only means of communication because every other avenue had been stripped from them that would be different I agree. It would suck to see a company going to great lengths to help blocking a cry of help if you were unable to use any other access point.

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somebody learned the phrase ‘hot take’ today I see.

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Isn’t OWL streamed separately for the Chinese viewers anyway?

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OW is meant to be welcoming and inclusive to everyone. I’m sure it will go in one ear and right out the other, but your weird grudges about geopolitics are, at best, extremely annoying to everyone else, and most likely make lots of people feel unwelcome as OW fans.

It should be incredibly obvious that spamming OWL chat with unrelated stuff about Chinese politics and history is not how you make Chinese fans (and players) feel welcome. No one is forcing you to wave a Chinese flag or whatever, all we want is to enjoy the game together. It really isn’t more complicated than that.

This modern “yellow peril” BS is something I have very little patience for, and I’m more than happy to see these kinds of comments banned. I hate to break it to you, but you aren’t saving the world or doing anything heroic by spamming about Tiananmen Square in an esports Youtube chat. You aren’t yelling at Xi Jinping, you are yelling at teenagers trying to enjoy a game.

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don’t forget the Sebyeolbe incident, where he spoke against china and all chinese teams refused to play with him in scrims. Blizzard aptly swept it under the rug.

And no, don’t “they’d ban politics of any kind” at me, you know it, we all know it, Blizzard has always bent down to china’s censorship laws.

The amount of gaslighting in this thread sickens me

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Take off your tinfoil hat. Mods don’t have to deal with you spamming garbage in their chat. China could not care less that a bunch of westerners don’t like them. You’ve convinced yourself that you’re fighting the good fight against the oppressive censorship of blizurd intertainmunt when all you’re doing is giving some chat mods a hard time by bringing up politics in chat they are paid to keep clean.

Exactly. The CCP does not care about you. Stop giving mods a hard time.

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Welcome to capitalism. This is not about Blizzard. It’s about the economic system we live in. It will happen everywhere, as long as the likes of a certain overpaid CEO need to keep shining their horns with more dollars, and as long as they’re allowed to.

See you at the revolution.

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They’d probably also remove comments that just said “9/11” over and over. I think this has less to do with China and more to do with keeping game chat game-related.

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