News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:We Chat, They Watch by gervu on Thursday May 07, 2020 @11:40PM (#23111185)
Wow, one character from a region that makes up 60% of the world's population? How radical. Next you'll be telling me that I should be worried because they included a black character and a female character.

If anything, the fact that anyone considers this at all notable should be a sign of just how racially biased casting is in most Western media. The world isn't nearly as white as it looks on your TV.

Re:We Chat, They Watch by softwarejosh on Thursday May 07, 2020 @11:49PM (#23111221)
yeah i literally dont get why the guy brought up race, they should be bringing up shit like video game companies making their black characters white to sell to china. or how about the basic example of blizzards fumbling of the pro hong kong competition winner last year
Re:We Chat, They Watch by pmachinery on Friday May 08, 2020 @12:39AM (#23111440)
> i literally don't get why the guy brought up race

They brought up race because they were replying to a racist conspiracy theory amounting to them running Hollywood and pushing their agenda.

Hacker News is one of the few sites - others being Stormfront, Daily Stormer, 8chan - where that kind of shit still flies.

Re:We Chat, They Watch by wolco on Friday May 08, 2020 @01:01AM (#23111556)
That opinion is more mainstream then you give it credit. It is backed up recently by the nba losses (2 billion reported) for letting a player give support to Hong kong.

China has increased their power. Calling that notion racist discounts all of the different people who make up China's population. China is a country with people of many different colors, backgrounds and religions. Thinking of China as a single color is a little racist.

Re:We Chat, They Watch by pmachinery on Friday May 08, 2020 @02:11AM (#23111893)
The NBA losing money and the Chinese government being totalitarian and thin skinned doesn't give free rein to any old racist shit, mate.

And they own media companies to push their agenda is flat out, textbook conspiracy theory racism, unless you have more evidence than something completely unrelated.

Re:We Chat, They Watch by orestarod on Friday May 08, 2020 @09:27AM (#23114616)
How is criticizing a government racist towards the people it happens to rule over, again?

In that logic, criticizing someone is racism towards each and every group that human happens to be part of. That's plain silly.

Re:We Chat, They Watch by pmachinery on Friday May 08, 2020 @12:26PM (#23116515)
"They own stakes in many american media companies and movie production houses. They use this influence to also change our Media and push pro-Jewish propaganda to the American public."

Just criticism of the Israeli government?

Re:We Chat, They Watch by vermilingua on Saturday May 09, 2020 @04:04AM (#23123032)
The difference there is that people holding those views never claim that the Israeli govt is behind such schemes, they believe it is the International Jewish Shadow Cabal, in which Israel is just a cog.
Re:We Chat, They Watch by pmachinery on Saturday May 09, 2020 @10:02AM (#23124755)
My point is that such a statement is obviously not referring to a government, but to a people.

Is your point seriously that such a statement is racist when about Jewish people, but not racist when about Chinese people?

Re:We Chat, They Watch by justwalt on Friday May 08, 2020 @02:01AM (#23111846)
I don’t think it’s fair to call it a racist position. I read it as them saying that the Chinese government is doing these things, not that the Chinese people are doing these things.
Re:We Chat, They Watch by mrcodedude on Friday May 08, 2020 @01:10AM (#23111598)
It's a racist conspiracy that China is using its financial leverage to influence creative decisions by American-based companies?

Why do you think the last few Transformer movies were made?

Re:We Chat, They Watch by pmachinery on Friday May 08, 2020 @01:49AM (#23111779)
Go on then, explain how the last few Transformer movies were about pushing pro-Chinese propaganda.
Re:We Chat, They Watch by mrcodedude on Friday May 08, 2020 @02:58AM (#23112118)
That's not what I said.

China is using its position to propagate and censor media both domestically and globally.

Not liking the actions of a government doesn't mean you're racist against that population.

https://screenrant.com/movies-changed-for-china/

> Decisions to cast Tilda Swinton as a 'celtic' incarnation of the Ancient One, typically a Tibetan character, alongside the choice to move Stephen Strange's place of spiritual enlightenment and training from Tibet to Nepal, have created significant controversy online from those who argue that Marvel Studios is whitewashing Strange's backstory to better appeal to the Chinese government.

Propaganda doesn't have to look like a commercial from a tourism board.

Re:We Chat, They Watch by pmachinery on Friday May 08, 2020 @04:53AM (#23112771)
> That's not what I said.

Then what you said has nothing to do with what I was commenting on, which was not a claim that Hollywood will do what it has to do to access the Chinese market, but a claim that "they" own stakes in media companies to push pro-Chinese propaganda to the American public.

Do you have some examples of that?

Re:We Chat, They Watch by mellow2020 on Friday May 08, 2020 @12:26PM (#23116522)
Imagine Germany successfully putting pressure on American movie makers to make Jewish figures in their stories be no longer Jewish, because in it's official German policy that Jews do not exist, they've always been just Germans or something else.

You can split hairs and say that's technically not pro-German, but anti-Jewish or whatever, and put "they" in quotes all you want; nobody who cares about the actual individual people and not just sophistry in a vacuum will be moved by it.

Re:We Chat, They Watch by pmachinery on Friday May 08, 2020 @01:28PM (#23117238)
And you can carry on avoiding the question all you want, if you can't bring yourself to call out a rancid old racist conspiracy theory for what it is.
Re:We Chat, They Watch by wolco on Friday May 08, 2020 @12:38AM (#23111438)
The problem is that black female character has been replaced with a female asian character.

The diversity of Americans is not being represented anymore. Trying to sell to the Chinese market has unintended costs.

Re:We Chat, They Watch by throw37543 on Friday May 08, 2020 @01:33AM (#23111695)
And these characters are typically paired up with the white male hero. Isn’t this more indicative of the director’s or writer’s fantasies?