They are applying Chinese “laws” to Americans in America

Just so we're all on the same page, they're applying their own pre-stated rules to people all over the world. I'm not advocating that what they're doing is right but lets not make things up.

Just so we’re clear, they are applying these “rules” at the behest of an authoritarian, antidemocratic government.

Nobody is making anything up.

Authoritarian ant antidemocratic government is just as legitimate as any other

We have United Nations to handle the issues like this, and from their point of view you are wrong.

Or rather the UN has hurt their own legitimacy, eh?

Indeed. Murder is not government:

https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/storage/301/d5d23e36-3c35-11e8...

No, they are not.

I am not sure why everyone keeps believing this lie.

There was no rule that banned political statements.

Instead the rule was something like "we can ban anyone for doing anything that might make blizzard look bad".

It was absolutely not some specific rule about banning political statements.

Just to be clear, they have no rule about not talking about politics. Just a general "don't say anything that we determine offended someone" rule.

Which they weren't going to enforce against the Americans, until it was pointed out. Then they belatedly enforced it to show they were consistently applying the rules and that it had nothing to do with China.

most of the shitstorm revolves around the fact that no, they aren't doing that.

The pre-stated rules don't talk about politics but about offending users.

So, ok, let's say that political statements are offensive, which is a weird proposition.

This is not being enforced for other political views and statements, nor for all users, so clearly it's not applying a pre-stated rule.

I feel the backtrack blizzard did can be considered a fair excusation, and people could reasonably forgive them, but let's not lie to ourselves by treating this as "just applying the rules".

They are not. Right now, the #1 player on the Hearthstone Asia Wild ladder is named "HKisCHINESE". Meanwhile, you are prohibited from registering a battle.net account named "FreeHK".

That is imposing China's rules. There is nothing illegal or even offensive about naming your gaming account "FreeHK". (Battle.net has plenty of political account names; seems like half the people in my Overwatch games are named Trump2020, and they're probably not talking about the Starcraft/Hearthstone streamer.)

Edit: I did go to actually check, and this account is currently #2 and Asia and North America, and #1 in Europe. Clearly Blizzard is aware of it, though, and has chosen to take no action.

i don't need them to follow chinese law in my country thank you very much

If we all agreed on following the same "law", we wouldn't need flags.

Ah, the days we will be drinking unicorn milk and Santa will start delivering presents again.

Because that's totally going to happen. Countries within themselves barely function without split alliances, different parties and ambitions. Now you want 7 billion people to act as one? I'll faster reach richest guy on the planet before that happens.

Quit pretending that wishful thinking is what you should bank on for better things to happen in the world.

You've missed my point.

Clearly we have flags => different "laws".

Maybe if I can learn to levitate, I can change the lightbulbs in my house.

No, get a ladder.

Because the no country, no flag idea makes people blind to finding practical solutions.

your comment may have been in response to someone else. The practicality of unifying the world has nothing to do with what you responded to.

Sadly that law will be the lowest least permissable set of laws - they will apply some dictators rules to you so they can sell video games to the people he oppresses.

>They follow the laws of countries they operate in.

No comrade asulnatao. Since this is your first ever post with your account, they're an American company imposing Chinese censorship upon Americans and other nations. That's a hard no go. They follow whatever law they need to in their established foreign entities. But none of that spills out to anywhere else.

No comrade corodra, since you're (implicitly) accusing another user of being a shill, I can only conclude that you are the shill who, this being your first deployment on the GRU's shared HN account, is not aware of this forum's rules against accusing someone of being a shill.

Bwahahahahahaha

Oh my god, that's funny. Especially since I've been posting anti-communist since, well, forever and even today. Good try there homie. Oh, that was funny. I actually laughed out loud.

And also that's fine. Ban me. But remember, when they silence everyone else, there's no one left to speak up for you.

> Especially since I've been posting anti-communist since, well, forever and even today

Which is congruous with you being a GRU operative, or even a CCP shill spreading black propaganda by making poor arguments.

> And also that's fine. Ban me. But remember, when they silence everyone else, there's no one left to speak up for you.

Stop being melodramatic. Somebody disagreed with you on HN, you're not getting sent to a death camp. Plus you weren't exactly "speaking up" for me in the first place.

There's plenty of good arguments against Activision Blizzard's actions without having to resort to Nazis; doing so only weakens the position.

EDIT: No matter the parallels between the CCP and Nazi Germany, bringing up Nazis will make many think "there's Goodwin's law in action again" and move on. Focus your arguments on the problems, not on making superficial comparisons.

> There's plenty of good arguments against Activision Blizzard's actions without having to resort to Nazis; doing so only weakens the position.

No, it doesn't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21289611

The comparison isn't "superficial".

Godwin's law is very clearly dead, have you seen the state of discourse in the US? "Nazi" is thrown around so liberally it has lost all meaning.

>"Nazi" is thrown around [in the US] so liberally it has lost all meaning.

I fail to see how that implies that Godwin's law is dead.

In fact, if true it would just imply... Godwin’s Law.

Dealing with that is CIA business, not Activision Blizzard.

Or maybe it's CBP business. If a foreign regime is turning the trade taps on and off to impose their values, then the counter to that is to turn those taps off yourself and sever that influence.

Would you say the same thing about IBM during 1940s, Germany?

So fire protestors?!

EDIT: reporters of protestors!?!

I love that line of argument.

1) China has done >0 bad things

2) Comparison is whataboutism

3) Therefore China is literally Nazi Germany (actual topic of this subthread, not a strawman).

in a thread about USA crimes asking 'but what about China?' would be whataboutism. with your line of thinking it's valid to derail any discussion.

Context matters. When the only relevant sins are those of our chief geopolitical rival.. at a certain point that says more about us than them.

And as a rough idea how SV's role in this will age:

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/542499/marshall-curr...

What seems snazzy and modern today, what is presented with smug sophistry and self-righteous downvotes, will be revised or swept under the rug tomorrow.

And a few years prior, Yeats had written that "The center cannot hold", and that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity".

Worth remembering, IMO. Lots of passionate people calling for a conflict, and it's not clear that they've thought about ramifications very deeply.

> Brute force plays a much larger part in the government of the world than it did before 1914, and what is especially alarming, force tends increasingly to fall into the hands of those who are enemies of civilisation. The danger is profound and terrible; it cannot be waved aside with easy optimism.

> The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points. This was not always the case. A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are; the result was that they dominated politics and that the world advanced rapidly both in intelligence and in material well-being.

> It is quite true that the intelligence of the philosophical radicals was very limited. It is, I think, undeniable that the best men of the present day have a wider and truer outlook, but the best men of that day had influence, while the best men of this are impotent spectators. Perhaps we shall have to realise that scepticism and intellectual individualism are luxuries which in our tragic age must be forgone, and if intelligence is to be effective, it will have to be combined with a moral fervour which it usually possessed in the past but now usually lacks.

-- Bertrand Russell, "The Triumph of Stupidity" https://russell-j.com/0583TS.HTM

You have me at a disadvantage here because I'm not sure which sentences you're trying to emphasize or how they relate to the debate.

It sounds like you're saying that you're so right, self-doubt would be an unnecessary encumbrance.

How many words of Chinese do you know? How much Chinese history? Have you ever seen a subsistence farmer?

> It sounds like you're saying that you're so right, self-doubt would be an unnecessary encumbrance.

What sentence gives you that idea?

Why? Places like the USA were perfectly fine with the Nazis until their ally bombed us. We also routinely turned away boats full of Jewish refugees that eventually had to return to Germany.

People hold the Nazis up as this great evil that the world banded together to defeat. But from what I can tell the world mostly didn't care until they were directly attacked. Most people truly don't give a crap about this stuff. Never have. Probably never will.

> Places like the USA were perfectly fine with the Nazis until their ally bombed us.

So I guess all those ships and supplies we sent to the UK and France before Japan hit Pearl Harbor were just for shits and giggles, right? What utter and complete nonsense.

So a random bunch of twats on the internet are allowed to make "laws" that dictate where people are allowed to make historical parallels?

Fuck Goodwin's law and any asshole that hides behind it because they're too scared to deal with reality. Might as well ban scientific literature and evidence to prove the Earth is round too. "There they go! Eratosthenes' law in action! They're trying to prove the Earth is round with science!"

Godwin is alright:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

But the people refer to his quip are often wrong -- certainly in context of a bona fide totalitarian regime that has been murdering dissidents for 7 decades -- and are using said quip as a cheap way out, while projecting that on those who made the comparison.

"Never again" and "don't even think of comparing anything with the Nazis, not even mass murdering totalitarian regimes" don't go together.