The only thing I’m reading from the shill replies is that business contracts are more important than freedom of speech and a venue to voice out a message against an oppressive totalitarian regime. Yes he broke the contract we all agree to that–but considering the dire situation his people is facing, I think Blizzard should have given him a break.
Because ad hominem attacks make you look soooo cool.
Do you know we have similar system with credit cards? Majority of the US population have credit cards and credit score.
Someone here who said yesterday that he approved by the officer to do a protest at Blizzard’s headquarters. So far it is not in the news.
We know the protestors have at times gotten violent what you aren’t telling is how the Triad was brought in to beat people relentlessly, sometimes even non-protestors just coming home from work on the train. You aren’t telling peoiple the cops sprayed blue paint from a fire hose at protestors so the government could ID them later, never to be seen again, you aren’t telling how people are getting shot, you aren’t telling that they have to wear masks just to avoid being ID’ed later. They then made that illegal. They wouldn’t have to use masks if the government wasn’t abusing human rights left right n center. the people of HK have had enough, they dont want to live in the dystopian nightmare that is China.
This is a very sensitive and emotional subject. Insults are gonna fly.
The problem with that is one of precedent, Islero.
Contract law, like all law, is based on precedent. If you establish a precedent where you ignore contracts because you like the guy and his message, you open yourself to legal challenges by people who you might not like. The same proviso that dropped the hammer on this guy is the same one that keeps ISIS and white supremacists from using it as a platform for their beliefs. You either apply it to everyone, or you risk it getting challenged in court and stripped out.
Also, freedom of speech applies to governments, not private corporations. It is the same reason why someone is not violating free speech if you get fired for promoting ‘conversion therapy’ for gay people in the workplace.
It isn’t Blizzard’s job to provide protesters a political stage. It is their job to make games. And when they contractually obligate ‘no politics’, that means that, regardless of how popular the politics are, if you bring politics in, you get banned.
How about so many gay characters in Overwatch, feminism in WoW (Jaina and Sylvannas as leading figures) and so on?
Are their games not political at all?
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You’re confusing the stories being told in a game, some of which were blatant marketing ploys to sucker in gullible people with virtue signalling, to a company protecting itself from future legal action by enforcing penalties when a breech of contract takes place.
I’m sure the PRC also justify their laws using that argument.
The real world application of the principal is difficult. In general, while the First Amendment itself only applies to the government, I would say the analysis of freedom of speech that has gone into the First Amendment by Supreme Court case law is probably the best resource for thinking about how the principal should be understood.
That is, if someone was forming a private company and said, “I want one of our company values to be support for freedom of speech,” the best repository of information about how they would practically apply that would be all that case law precedent, which grapples with when and how restrictions on freedom of speech can be justified while still respecting the principal.
Well, the principal is only applied to the government under constitutional law. Like almost any other freedom, the government is in turn empowered to pass statutory laws protecting the freedom for its citizens when it views it under threat from private sources. Some states have statutory laws directed to protecting people from employment discrimination for their political affiliations, for instance, which often utilize similar analytical framework as First Amendment cases against the government.
There are factions pushing to regulate social media companies by statute in the way the government is by the First Amendment (though they do not have enough support to pass any of their proposed laws currently). Until recently, the idea of power to influence speech being concentrated that much would have been something people only imagined governments would have. There are pretty compelling arguments that our statutory laws are behind the times and need to be updated to account for the internet era, and that the biggest threats to freedom of speech today in the U.S. do not come from the American government but from concentration of power in the private sector (which, in turn, can be influenced by OTHER foreign governments, like China).
Who knows where it will go, but in terms of the power to regulate to protect freedom of speech, I’m not sure anyone doubts that the government CAN wield that power, it’s just a question of whether they’re WILLING to wield that power. When the government flexes its muscles to regulate “interstate commerce,” the limits on its statutory authority are really sparse. It most certainly would bring the social companies into serious conflict with other foreign governments, though one would expect the American government to plan for that and use their pressure to shield them where they’re able for compliance with American laws. Also, many American legislators might be perfectly happy forcing American companies to have to make a choice on compliance with U.S. laws or compliance with Chinese laws.
This is true. One thing that can be hard to grapple with is sometimes it’s not just different freedoms competing against each other, but the same freedom held by two different people or entities.
I wouldn’t agree that Blizzard’s been a politically neutral company. They are pretty progressive in their company culture, and it comes out in their public profile in America.
It seems like the severity of the action is what really made this thing explode. It made it seem less like the company upholding their own principals, and a lot more like the company desperately trying to keep themselves ingratiated to China’s censors.
Part of the issue is people will judge what’s going on based on how much discretion a company policy gives to the decision makers. A set of rules routinely enforced to keep things politically neutral, with a graduating scale of punishments for repeat violations, gets a lot of trust. A policy of, “the punishment will be whatever we feel like, whenever we think you did something that made us look bad” is going to naturally lead to a lot of scrutiny on an incident-by-incident basis when a punishment is severe.
That’s effectively how Blizzard’s policy operated, so it led to scrutiny here, and the scrutiny landed on the single worst possible week it could have landed - right after the NBA thing and right after South Park intentionally engaged in mockery of China they knew would get them banned. For once, RNG kind of screwed over Blizzard instead of their players.
So does every other government. Because that is one of the foundations of the rule of law.
same can be said about hollywood movies, all of it is not real, yet, there are plenty of political messages there, am I wrong to think so?
Then nothing would get changed.
Once again you are getting your source entirely from our media, many of the points you made are fake news that’s been debunked if you cared to read BOTH sides on the internet. If you read my original post, I have already said that police was being overly violent in their arrests, and should be investigated.
I have already given my 2 cents on the triad issue, tell me this, what kind of government/police are dumb enough to hire triads to beat up random people in broad day light while being filmed by hundreds of reporters, while knowing this is going to be a bad public image for them? What do you think they have to gain from it? Have you considered the possibility this is conspiracy theory?
As for you saying people are disappearing, that is utterly false, there are barely any reports on pro protest media forums. There was at one stage of a couple of protesters crying wolf, which was later debunked by police showing images of their release to media, so once again, not looking at both sides.
I already said people got shot in my original post. Have you watched the full video of the shooting? Did you see under what circumstances that protester was shot in?
My original post is to encourage people to not to blindly trust one side of the story, no matter how ridiculous and cruel it sounds. read Both sides of the story and make up your own opinion, if you don’t want to fall victim to propaganda.
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No. its not fake news, the only fake news is the stuff you’re trying to pedal. Get out of here.
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Then those posts should be “I’m taking a break from WoW”. Quitting implies a certain permanence.
No, you’re not wrong to think so. However, you are wrong to think that a movie put out by Paramount reflects what Paramount will or won’t do to people who break contracts with them.
No, laws can be changed. However, you cannot selectively enforce those laws. They apply to everyone, or they apply to no one. It is the same with contracts, and contract law.
This is a very informational post, thank you. All the posts i’ve been seeing have been one sided and it’s nice to see it all on a broader view.
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Is the government shooting at protestors with sniper rifles “murky” to you?
Honestly some people.