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This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. That is so completely obvious that it boggles t

This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

jack1243star 7y ago
>> Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. Of course it's not, but you're missing the point. They're simply taking advantage of this incoherence in the current western value.
tomp 7y ago
Well thank God then that wasn't my argument. What I'm saying is, China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship (edit: in the West).
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship No, it’s using good old greater-pile-of-money diplomacy. SJWs aren’t running around rooting for Xi. This is a company with major economic exposure to China bowing to censors’ wills.
  - yourbandsucks 7y ago
    I don't think you're disagreeing with the poster. They're saying that cancel culture has normalized private sector political censorship in the west prior to this, making it a smaller reach. The $ considerations are certainly there in all cases.
  - dmix 7y ago
    "SJWs" dont have to root for China for this to be an effective strategy... I think you're missing the point.
    - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > “SJWs" dont have to root for China for this to be an effective strategy The point was that “ China is co-opting modern liberal censorship” to advance its agenda. That’s simply not the case. One is driven by mass outrage—bottom up. The other by central diktat—top down. They’re separate and unconnected vectors.
      - dmix 7y ago
        Again, the point is we've created an easily abusable system. The default response to any problem is now censorship and banning. We've trained corporations to take the easiest path and never stand up for speech or unpopular views being pushed on their platforms. This idea that we can easily define was is 'not okay' to say on the internet from a rational leftist perspective and expect it all to just work out in the end is laughable and constantly being proven wrong. These same left leaning people would never hold this sort of trust in big institutions to make these decisions in any other case. It's actually scary that so many people are so happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater to serve some political ends. There's a very good reason ACLU defended the right for neo-Nazis to protest in the streets for decades (including their work allowing Charlottesville to happen). Precedent matter. Blizzard et al should have taken a stand against regulating the speech of their customers private lives long ago. And I'm not talking about forum moderation in individual communities which has its own rules of civil discourse.
        SantalBlush 7y ago
        >The default response to any problem is now censorship and banning. No it isn't. That is to say, censorship and banning are less of a problem now than they've been at any other time in US history.
        dmix 7y ago
        Being better than centralized TV networks owned by a few billion dollar companies, likewise with the newspapers, is no excuse for modern corporations actions 2019. We have something special here where we can make a stand and protect our internet celebrities the same way we have if it wasn't on the internet. Far too many people are cynically willing to give it up either for political ends and ignore the early censorship by nation states believing both would be contained within a manageable subset and won't be both broaded used against legitimate dissents or openly abused to silence ideological opponents. This is the natural and predictable outcome, the conditional free speech policy thing doesn't when it faces the reality on the ground. And as I've said multiple times today this has nothing to do with how discourse is moderated on internet forums. The rules of civil discourse in individual communities is much more flexible than defining it purely on the loudest complainers political redlines.
- johnday 7y ago
  And no, they aren't. The two things may look superficially similar but Chinese political censorship is much, much older and the process but which it is done hasn't changed in a long time.
  - bjornsing 7y ago
    Ehh... But how old is enforcement of Chinese political censorship in the West?
    - monocasa 7y ago
      Blizzard is partially owned by a Chinese company. They're using money, not cancel culture.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Free speech was once valued in USA. In that context this wouldn't have happened. Now that freedom of speech is no longer valued, this sort of thing can happen. Now I state for the record that I know these are the censorious actions of a private firm, not those of the USA federal government. It is of course possible to value speech outside a strict 1A framework. In previous decades, many Americans did so value free speech.
        monocasa 7y ago
        No it wasn't. The same political sphere that's now complaining about how SJWs are ruining free speech had no problems black balling a large chunk of hollywood in the 50s for their private political speech.
        quotemstr 7y ago
        The people who regard 1950s Hollywood as an example of malfeasance are the same people who are currently doing the exact same thing to the text industry with the polarity reversed. They have no moral standing whatsoever to complain. If this weren't my industry, the hypocrisy would be hilarious. As long as you get people fired from their jobs for having the wrong opinions about social issues in the US, you have no right to demand that companies not censor what the Chinese censors dislike. Now do you realize the value of free speech as a general principle?
- k__ 7y ago
  lol, this is basically what the government in 1984 would say.
- SantalBlush 7y ago
  >liberal censorship There is no "liberal censorship", unless you can point me to an instance where a bunch of liberals imprisoned someone for offending them. When people complain about liberal censorship, they're really complaining that other people have the right to respond negatively to what you say. Cancel culture is also not censorship, and it would be childish to conflate those two things.
  - FillardMillmore 7y ago
    How about Julian Assange? 'Cancel culture' may not be censorship in its technical definition, but isn't that effectively what it's achieving? A comedian, for example, tweets some half-baked remark that some (loud minority) find offensive. Of course, they do respond to this negatively but the media also runs with it and this group of loud people call for the cancellation of shows, appearances, and sometimes even call for the firing of the person. You are correct in that this person, even after all of this, has outlets and ways to practice their freedom of speech - but it's essentially sending other people a not-so-subtle sign that there are certain things they simply shouldn't say, lest they would like a twitter mob aimed at them. Occasionally, older public remarks are even dug up by journalists and used to smear the character of those people who made the remarks today. There needs to be some form of restitution, but one currently does not seem to be well defined.
    - SantalBlush 7y ago
      I agree with a lot of what you say here, and I also think people should be more resilient to offensive remarks by others. I'm only saying that calling it censorship is alarmist and untrue. Moreover, my above comment is grayed out right now as some people downvote it. Let's all think about that irony for a moment.
  - bena 7y ago
    "Censorship" isn't just being imprisoned. Censorship is the simple act of not allowing someone to say something. Companies censor all the time. Movie studios. Recording companies. I've noticed this trend with people, they identify something as negative, in this case censorship, and then they try and contort definitions to excuse their involvement in it. Because that's a bad thing and they're good people and good people don't do bad things. I'm going to come in with a hot take: censorship isn't inherently bad. It just is. Censorship can be used to focus discussion on what's important. To keep garbage out of discourse. Those are good uses of it. Yes, it can be used to simply silence dissent. That is a bad use. But just because it can be used in a bad way doesn't make it bad itself.
jessaustin 7y ago
...it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it. Saying it didn't make it true. Do us all the favor of a more convincing argument. Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California.
- johnday 7y ago
  You're asking me to defend me disagreeing with the original point - the burden of argument should really be on them, but anyway... Tiananmen square is an immediate and obvious pick. People who publicly referenced the events of Tiananmen square were not allowed to interact with China on a business level. If Hearthstone had existed back then and the streamer had mentioned Tiananmen square, Blizzard would (I think) have taken exactly the same approach as they did today. There's no co-opting of Western politicking here. > Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California. Blizzard is heavily integrated with Tencent in China. The actions they took are to preserve that relationship. Ergo the censorship of China is what we're looking at here - without it this event would not have occurred.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    They have some sort of partnership arrangement, but it really is a surprise to me to find out that a partnership like that has had the censorious effects we've seen here. It's hard to imagine that this would have played out the same way for a partnership with a firm based in e.g. Russia or UK or Brazil. [EDIT: Or even a firm from those nations that owned 5% of Blizzard.] I guess I'm saying that I didn't "see this coming". I suppose that you and thread parent did, but it still seems notable to me.
    - monocasa 7y ago
      Blizzard is partially owned by a Chinese company.
hanselot 7y ago
baizuo
bjornsing 7y ago
That would be utter nonsense, yes, if it was what the parent claimed. But as I understood the parent it was about enforcement of eastern censorship in the West. I found it a quite interesting observation (relatively unrelated to modern liberal views).
- johnday 7y ago
  I see what you mean, but even then I find it to be untrue. Blizzard didn't react here because they were hurting China's feelings, but because they have a strong business relationship with the Party in China via Tencent.
parrellel 7y ago
The framing. The external framing...

This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

jack1243star 7y ago

>> Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. Of course it's not, but you're missing the point. They're simply taking advantage of this incoherence in the current western value.

tomp 7y ago

Well thank God then that wasn't my argument. What I'm saying is, China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship (edit: in the West).

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship No, it’s using good old greater-pile-of-money diplomacy. SJWs aren’t running around rooting for Xi. This is a company with major economic exposure to China bowing to censors’ wills.
- yourbandsucks 7y ago
  I don't think you're disagreeing with the poster. They're saying that cancel culture has normalized private sector political censorship in the west prior to this, making it a smaller reach. The $ considerations are certainly there in all cases.
- dmix 7y ago
  "SJWs" dont have to root for China for this to be an effective strategy... I think you're missing the point.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > “SJWs" dont have to root for China for this to be an effective strategy The point was that “ China is co-opting modern liberal censorship” to advance its agenda. That’s simply not the case. One is driven by mass outrage—bottom up. The other by central diktat—top down. They’re separate and unconnected vectors.
    - dmix 7y ago
      Again, the point is we've created an easily abusable system. The default response to any problem is now censorship and banning. We've trained corporations to take the easiest path and never stand up for speech or unpopular views being pushed on their platforms. This idea that we can easily define was is 'not okay' to say on the internet from a rational leftist perspective and expect it all to just work out in the end is laughable and constantly being proven wrong. These same left leaning people would never hold this sort of trust in big institutions to make these decisions in any other case. It's actually scary that so many people are so happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater to serve some political ends. There's a very good reason ACLU defended the right for neo-Nazis to protest in the streets for decades (including their work allowing Charlottesville to happen). Precedent matter. Blizzard et al should have taken a stand against regulating the speech of their customers private lives long ago. And I'm not talking about forum moderation in individual communities which has its own rules of civil discourse.
      - SantalBlush 7y ago
        >The default response to any problem is now censorship and banning. No it isn't. That is to say, censorship and banning are less of a problem now than they've been at any other time in US history.
        dmix 7y ago
        Being better than centralized TV networks owned by a few billion dollar companies, likewise with the newspapers, is no excuse for modern corporations actions 2019. We have something special here where we can make a stand and protect our internet celebrities the same way we have if it wasn't on the internet. Far too many people are cynically willing to give it up either for political ends and ignore the early censorship by nation states believing both would be contained within a manageable subset and won't be both broaded used against legitimate dissents or openly abused to silence ideological opponents. This is the natural and predictable outcome, the conditional free speech policy thing doesn't when it faces the reality on the ground. And as I've said multiple times today this has nothing to do with how discourse is moderated on internet forums. The rules of civil discourse in individual communities is much more flexible than defining it purely on the loudest complainers political redlines.
johnday 7y ago
And no, they aren't. The two things may look superficially similar but Chinese political censorship is much, much older and the process but which it is done hasn't changed in a long time.
- bjornsing 7y ago
  Ehh... But how old is enforcement of Chinese political censorship in the West?
  - monocasa 7y ago
    Blizzard is partially owned by a Chinese company. They're using money, not cancel culture.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Free speech was once valued in USA. In that context this wouldn't have happened. Now that freedom of speech is no longer valued, this sort of thing can happen. Now I state for the record that I know these are the censorious actions of a private firm, not those of the USA federal government. It is of course possible to value speech outside a strict 1A framework. In previous decades, many Americans did so value free speech.
      - monocasa 7y ago
        No it wasn't. The same political sphere that's now complaining about how SJWs are ruining free speech had no problems black balling a large chunk of hollywood in the 50s for their private political speech.
        quotemstr 7y ago
        The people who regard 1950s Hollywood as an example of malfeasance are the same people who are currently doing the exact same thing to the text industry with the polarity reversed. They have no moral standing whatsoever to complain. If this weren't my industry, the hypocrisy would be hilarious. As long as you get people fired from their jobs for having the wrong opinions about social issues in the US, you have no right to demand that companies not censor what the Chinese censors dislike. Now do you realize the value of free speech as a general principle?
k__ 7y ago
lol, this is basically what the government in 1984 would say.
SantalBlush 7y ago
>liberal censorship There is no "liberal censorship", unless you can point me to an instance where a bunch of liberals imprisoned someone for offending them. When people complain about liberal censorship, they're really complaining that other people have the right to respond negatively to what you say. Cancel culture is also not censorship, and it would be childish to conflate those two things.
- FillardMillmore 7y ago
  How about Julian Assange? 'Cancel culture' may not be censorship in its technical definition, but isn't that effectively what it's achieving? A comedian, for example, tweets some half-baked remark that some (loud minority) find offensive. Of course, they do respond to this negatively but the media also runs with it and this group of loud people call for the cancellation of shows, appearances, and sometimes even call for the firing of the person. You are correct in that this person, even after all of this, has outlets and ways to practice their freedom of speech - but it's essentially sending other people a not-so-subtle sign that there are certain things they simply shouldn't say, lest they would like a twitter mob aimed at them. Occasionally, older public remarks are even dug up by journalists and used to smear the character of those people who made the remarks today. There needs to be some form of restitution, but one currently does not seem to be well defined.
  - SantalBlush 7y ago
    I agree with a lot of what you say here, and I also think people should be more resilient to offensive remarks by others. I'm only saying that calling it censorship is alarmist and untrue. Moreover, my above comment is grayed out right now as some people downvote it. Let's all think about that irony for a moment.
- bena 7y ago
  "Censorship" isn't just being imprisoned. Censorship is the simple act of not allowing someone to say something. Companies censor all the time. Movie studios. Recording companies. I've noticed this trend with people, they identify something as negative, in this case censorship, and then they try and contort definitions to excuse their involvement in it. Because that's a bad thing and they're good people and good people don't do bad things. I'm going to come in with a hot take: censorship isn't inherently bad. It just is. Censorship can be used to focus discussion on what's important. To keep garbage out of discourse. Those are good uses of it. Yes, it can be used to simply silence dissent. That is a bad use. But just because it can be used in a bad way doesn't make it bad itself.

jessaustin 7y ago

...it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it. Saying it didn't make it true. Do us all the favor of a more convincing argument. Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California.

johnday 7y ago
You're asking me to defend me disagreeing with the original point - the burden of argument should really be on them, but anyway... Tiananmen square is an immediate and obvious pick. People who publicly referenced the events of Tiananmen square were not allowed to interact with China on a business level. If Hearthstone had existed back then and the streamer had mentioned Tiananmen square, Blizzard would (I think) have taken exactly the same approach as they did today. There's no co-opting of Western politicking here. > Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California. Blizzard is heavily integrated with Tencent in China. The actions they took are to preserve that relationship. Ergo the censorship of China is what we're looking at here - without it this event would not have occurred.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  They have some sort of partnership arrangement, but it really is a surprise to me to find out that a partnership like that has had the censorious effects we've seen here. It's hard to imagine that this would have played out the same way for a partnership with a firm based in e.g. Russia or UK or Brazil. [EDIT: Or even a firm from those nations that owned 5% of Blizzard.] I guess I'm saying that I didn't "see this coming". I suppose that you and thread parent did, but it still seems notable to me.
  - monocasa 7y ago
    Blizzard is partially owned by a Chinese company.

hanselot 7y ago

baizuo

bjornsing 7y ago

That would be utter nonsense, yes, if it was what the parent claimed. But as I understood the parent it was about enforcement of eastern censorship in the West. I found it a quite interesting observation (relatively unrelated to modern liberal views).

johnday 7y ago
I see what you mean, but even then I find it to be untrue. Blizzard didn't react here because they were hurting China's feelings, but because they have a strong business relationship with the Party in China via Tencent.

parrellel 7y ago

The framing. The external framing...