The difference is that a country which is committing human rights abuses is pressuring said private company (among _many_ others) to abridge free speech. The other case is a private company not wanting to host right-wing neo-nazi content of which the general public isn’t really accepting. I don’t see the hypocrisy here at all.. tbh I don’t even quite understand how you can conflate the two situations other than the fact the two words “free” and “speech” are involved.
Both situations feature people being banned by companies due to their speech because the companies fear backlash from more powerful entities (China or the media/general public respectively).
I don't follow your argument. Is it that we should not worry about morals and ethics, and instead just look at actions in vacuum, and decide whether or not an action should be taken with no regard to context?
It's not hypocritical for someone to believe that Cloudflare should kick nazis off their service and at the same time believe Blizzard should stand up to China.
Human beings are capable of exercising nuance and understanding complex topics. I don't want to generally go around punching or kicking people, but if I'm cornered and someone is trying to do harm to me, I'm going to fight back. It's the context around such actiona that defines whether or not it was just.
>is pressuring said private company (among _many_ others) to abridge free speech
It was a post-game interview on a Blizzard event in a Blizzard broadcast. How is that different from "a private company not wanting to host <content>" ? The player had supported HK freedom on his Twitter in the past, yet was allowed to play in the tournament. Gaming events have not been places for sharing political ideas, like social media is.
I think that there would be no meaningful uproar if Blizzard would simply not host or broadcast that interview because they don't like it for whatever reason, and left it at that.
FWIW, there is no visible pressure that has been exhibited from China against Blizzard. There have been no statements from China either in support or condemnation of any of the involved actors.
The situation is entirely driven by Blizzard, for fear of their potential revenue stream out of China.
This is in contrast to the NBA scenario, where China did speak out against the NBA, and later began to cancel contracts.
You can't say there is no visible pressure on Blizzard while mentioning the NBA in the same breath. China's aggressive move on the NBA is the pressure. It's an example to every company that operates in China: toe the party line, or face local obstruction like the NBA.
Activision Blizzard is not a company that would be bankrupted by the loss of the Chinese market; they chose on their own merely for a potential future in that market.
That they chose to toe the party line on their own, without prompting from the Chinese government, with swift and overwhelming penalties on the player and shoutcasters doesn't exactly speak well for Blizzard.
That's still "visible pressure". Not sure why it needs to be an extinction level threat for you to recognize it as overt Chinese pressure.
If I demonstrate to you that I'm going to shoot your legs if you don't tell me I'm pretty by doing so to people around you, and then I walk up to you and you tell me I'm pretty, would it be accurate to say you chose to tell me I'm pretty all on your own, totally unprompted? Can I say that you chose on your own merely for a potential future in walking? Hey, you won't be killed by the loss of your legs.
That's because Blizzard did the "right" thing in the government's view. Just because the influence isn't visible doesn't mean it's not there, and invisible influence may be even more pernicious.
So if the U.S. makes a law that fines companies for criticizing the president, and then Blizzard fires an employee for criticizing the president to avoid the fine, it's Blizzard's decision in the end and everything's fine? I don't know if you have considered the implications of this logic.
It's possible Blizzard is only surviving if they have access to Chinese market? We don't know their financials, management might be just prudent from their point of view in order to survive (people are way more obsessed with gaming in Eastern Asia than anywhere else and those regions have largest population). The management is certainly fully aware of the whole sh*tshow and likely aren't happy with whatever choice they have.
Their statements to shareholders put the Chinese market at 10% of their total revenue. ATVI is posting billions of dollars in profits, and has a profit margin of 25%+.
Activision Blizzard is in no risk of going bankrupt even if they lose the entire Chinese market.
Good, then voting with one's valet should be a good strategy to bring them back to their senses, unless they are 100% into some Chinese-friendly business ideology. Blizzard is off my list, I might re-evaulate in 1 year.
I love seeing how often people's (mostly on Reddit) answer to the question "how do we determine who're the nazis?" and they answer glibly "easy, they're the literal nazis'.
We've seen this all before with the "terrorist" label, the "communist" label in Hollywood blacklists, various Puritan attempts at censorship for sex, films, music, etc.
I wished I believed this much in our centralize opaque institutions to create these red lines consistently, reliably, and fairly. Which is amusing because much of the people pushing for this the hardest are often the same people who would never hand over such power in almost any other scenario.
The only reliable outcome, that we've seen repeatedly over and over in history is that once you start expanding censorship beyond just the obviously bad-guys (spam, violence, etc) and start wadding into the grey areas of speech is that:
a) context and intention, which are critical in day-to-day discourse, are increasing ignored as the system scales and the scope increases
b) the line will only keep expanding into a broader and broader group ("you did it for x, why not y?!!")
c) false positives dramatically increase
d) due process is only afforded in rare situations where the individual is already famous/powerful and can stir up enough controversy forcing the gatekeepers to actually consider it carefully
Everything goes great at the beginning as you sweep up the low hanging fruit. It's the long run where this 'solution' really gets tested - which is the phase we're now entering on many platforms.
