Blizzard stiffs and bans a Hong Kong supporter, wonders why people hate them

[Ralin]

I would like to point out this becomes an issue if the right to freedom of speech ends up suppressing the right of others.

Fortunately that's not the case here, because freedom of speech does not extend to advocating violence against Chinese people or undermining China's sovereignty.

[Straha]

I would like to point out this becomes an issue if the right to freedom of speech ends up suppressing the right of others.

Fortunately that's not the case here, because freedom of speech does not extend to advocating violence against Chinese people or undermining China's sovereignty.

Pretty compelling argument against defending the legitimacy of the PRC given how defending them requires defending mass violence against Chinese people (i.e. Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers) and undermining the sovereignty of the Chinese people who have tried to express their will against the CCP and the PRC.

[madd0ct0r]

...
Maybe you should reexamine your own preconceptions, because you are implicitly saying that it's somehow undemocratic for companies to value their Chinese customers as much or even more so than their customers in America or elsewhere. Were you saying this when companies were changing their policies towards gay couples and firing employees for homophobic statements and opinions to avoid boycotts and cater to people who support gay rights? No? Then why is this where you draw the line?

I would like to point out this becomes an issue if the right to freedom of speech ends up suppressing the right of others.

Fortunately that's not the case here, because freedom of speech does not extend to advocating violence against Chinese people or undermining China's sovereignty.

One Person, one dollar, one vote!
Ralin is right of course, that this is consumer activisim, and it would be foolish for us to conflate the sincere wishes of a chinese person voting with their wallet; with the programmed wishes of online community of river crabs, with the hegemonic wishes of a angry centrally controlled super-power.

But Ralin also suggests that one person's opionion is very like anothers, equal weighted, valued and equally correct. That last part is wrong. We are moral creatures who exist to a moral code. For many in the west, that includes self-determininism. It also includes suspcion of centrally controlled superpowers. Either of those reasons would be enough to value the opinions of Hong Kong protestors over their opposition and lament if they appear to be loosing the media war.
If you are someone who holds soveriegnity as a core value, then I suppose you would disgaree. Perhaps many spanish people are sympathetic to china's problems with HK. But either way you can support a Chinese person right to complain and boycott, without agreeing with thier actual position.

[Ralin]

Pretty compelling argument against defending the legitimacy of the PRC given how defending them requires defending mass violence against Chinese people (i.e. Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers) and undermining the sovereignty of the Chinese people who have tried to express their will against the CCP and the PRC.

Not at all, because Tibetans, Uyghurs and Hong Kong people are all Chinese and outside a small minority of malcontents that are rejected by the population at large all of those demographics overwhelmingly recognize and support the PRC government as their sole legitimate representative.

Remember, for all that some media outlets want to spin the anti-criminal justice riots in Hong Kong as some sort of popular movement against the national government they began in response to a bill introduced by Hong Kong's own legislature. The police suppressing the riots are local Hong Kong residents themselves acting in accordance with the Hong Kong SAR's own laws and under the authority of the city government.

[ray245]

If you are someone who holds soveriegnity as a core value, then I suppose you would disgaree.

Unfortunately, the history of the West in violating Chinese sovereignty in the past has a impact on how Chinese values it compared to many westerners. The fact that the violation, and the political fragmentation of the Chinese state was used by Western powers and Japan to commit acts of violence has left a cultural memory amongst the Chinese. The people who have experienced such acts are still alive ( those that grew up in during WW2).

The more the liberal section of the western world react against China and Hong Kong, the more easy it is for people in China to perceive liberalism merely as a renewed justification for violating Chinese sovereignty, and enabling all the problems that that might entail. Because of the historical context, it becomes tricky to frame it simply in a manner of liberalism vs totalitarianism to the Chinese. There is a Chinese fear that Western liberals do want to break up China like what happened to the Soviet Union. And the problems that arose from the collapse of the Soviet Union would have been in the minds of most Chinese political elites.

Pretty compelling argument against defending the legitimacy of the PRC given how defending them requires defending mass violence against Chinese people (i.e. Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers) and undermining the sovereignty of the Chinese people who have tried to express their will against the CCP and the PRC.

I do not want to comment on the issue of the Uighurs and the Tibetans, but on the issue of Hong Kong, I think you need to read up more about the issue. Your reading of the situation in Hong Kong does not fully capture the generation and cultural divide that exist within Hong Kong Society. While the media in the West do focus on the protesters, they really does not fully tell the story of the older generation whom aren't as inclined to support the current protest movement. But some articles do comment on it, and people from western countries really need to read a whole lot more about the issue in Hong Kong.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/09/asia ... index.html

Though some in the older generation also identify as Hong Kongers, many instead identify as Chinese and call China their motherland. After all, a sizable number of their own parents came from China -- in the 1940s, a huge wave of mainland emigrants fled the Chinese Civil War to Hong Kong. From 1946 to 1956, the city's population jumped from 1.55 million to 2.677 million, according to a 1969 report by Hong Kong's Census and Statistics Department.

"To me, I feel Hong Kong is part of China," said Tony Lau, 58, who works in real estate investment and development. "You can't choose your fate -- you can't say, 'I want to be American' or 'I want to be British.' Because of Hong Kong's history, you are a part of China."
He also feels closer to the mainland because, in some ways, he and his peers owe their economic success to China. "When China opened up in 1978, Hong Kong's opportunities came," he said.

As China's economy boomed and transformed the country's global image into one of power and wealth, older Hong Kongers may have felt greater pride toward the mainland, according to Cheng.

The dichotomy between being a Hong Konger and Chinese also encompasses the larger conflict between the two generations' values. Hong Kong has protected freedoms of speech, press, and assembly -- which young protesters guard fiercely and see as fundamental to Hong Kong's DNA.
In recent years, they've clung to these freedoms even more tightly amid a growing mistrust of the government and the perception that China is encroaching on Hong Kong's autonomy.

This is all tied up the history of colonialism, racism and etc.

[Zinegata]

And in other news, Colin Kaepernick still hasn't been hired by any NFL team for making a political statement. Where is the ongoing outrage and widespread calls to boycott the NFL?

Fighting for "Freedom of speech" in the Internet age is increasingly just shitty people refusing to own up to their own shitty situations, in favor of chasing after the newest fad social issue.

[Tiriol]

Yeaaah... and how's that working out for Hong Kong right now, ths vaunted "China's really not bad, and BRITISH EMPIRE BAD, *I'm a smarmy asshole*? don't pay attention to the actual citizens protesting in millions" approach?

You do realize that it was the Hong Kong local government that proposed the law that caused the protests to begin with, yes?

So what does the British have to do with any of this, other than the HK local government being consistently a bunch of suck-ups trying to impress their imperial masters?

YOU dragged the British Empire into this by talking about Imperial masters. Don't now go all high and mighty. And we know quite well that the proposed act of legislation would have helped Chinese authorities immensely and was done in their interest. Just saying "sucking up to Imperial masters!" doesn't absolve the Chinese authorities.

I don't give a flying fuck about this endless parade of whataboutism morons or "West is just bigoted against China!" claims. Same kind of arguments are used to justify modern Russian imperialism and same kind of idiocy has given rise to Far Right autocrats and Far Right populism across the globe. Blizzard has gone all stupid with this censorship and now it has royally exploded to their face with God alone knows how many people terminating (or at least TRYING to terminate; at this point it seems Blizzard has removed the deletion option entirely and even has the utter gall to demand ID PROOF, which still doesn't work) their Battlenet accounts. I hope their bottom line falls so far that an old Scrooge McDuck comic where the revenue line goes either through a hole in a ground becomes reality for them.

You don't give a flying fuck because you're a bigot. "Whataboutism" is in fact the argument of bigots, invented by insecure Americans trying to hide all the ugly realities of their country by insisting other countries must somehow be worst.

So, you really, really DON'T have any actual argument apart from "YOU'RE A BIGOT!". Noted.

For your information, I'm not an American. I don't have any illusions about the US and how it conducts itself. I have even LESS illusions about China, Russia etc. and their busy fanboys. China is dictatorship and in gross violations of several human rights, as is Russia. You don't like it? Not my problem, even if you call me a bigot. I'm only ashamed of Western countries accepting this as a matter of fact and letting those countries AND Western leaders try to emulate them get away with it.

[Zinegata]

YOU dragged the British Empire into this by talking about Imperial masters. Don't now go all high and mighty. And we know quite well that the proposed act of legislation would have helped Chinese authorities immensely and was done in their interest. Just saying "sucking up to Imperial masters!" doesn't absolve the Chinese authorities.

No, that's you still sucking Churchill's rotting war criminal dick.

I merely explained what the Hong Kong government actually is. It's a colonial money-laundering outpost. It will be a repressive regime regardless of who the boss is.

For your information, I'm not an American.

I didn't call you an American. I called you a bigot. You can be a bigot without being an American, and that starts by sucking the cock of a long-dead empire and pretending it's some great bastion of freedom when more people died in the Bengal Famine than are supposedly imprisoned in the Xinjiang re-education camps.

Moreover, whataboutism is American-invented, whereas your entire pointless rebuttal implies its American-exclusive. You're too fucking stupid to realize that you fell for American-invented propaganda, so you pretend it's American-exclusive to dodge the reality that you're a gullible lapdog instead of a cool edgelord.

By contrast there have been studies made by your neighbor, Sweden, on the truth of whataboutism. And what they found was that Americans use whataboutism consistently to apologize for their systematic racism of the African-American community in the 1960s. Every time the Soviets or anyone else had the temerity to point out that black Americans had to ride at the back of the bus, the Americans would cover their ears and scream whataboutism.

That's why it's a bigoted argument. That's why anyone who uses the term is a lazy bigot. It was invented to allow bigoted Americans to ignore all criticisms of their racist system, and anyone who keeps using the terms is therefore perpetuating this bigotry.

And guess what? It fucking works, because pandering to racist bigots like you is apparently very easy because you're so fucking stupid. America is still a worse police state for African-Americans even today than China is to its own people. Proportionately speaking, America imprisons more people than China does. African-American disproportionately account for the imprisoned, and most studies indicate that many if not the majority are innocent.

By most sane definitions, that's an actual fucking police state. But sure, whataboutism. You win the Internet you sad racist piece of shit.

[madd0ct0r]

If you are someone who holds soveriegnity as a core value, then I suppose you would disgaree.

Unfortunately, the history of the West in violating Chinese sovereignty in the past has a impact on how Chinese values it compared to many westerners. The fact that the violation, and the political fragmentation of the Chinese state was used by Western powers and Japan to commit acts of violence has left a cultural memory amongst the Chinese. The people who have experienced such acts are still alive ( those that grew up in during WW2). ...

I do not want to comment on the issue of the Uighurs and the Tibetans...

I bet you dont. The thing is, history did not stop after ww2.
China, who was getting the shitty end of the stick for a century, has since annexed Tibet, invaded Vietnam, has been doing a little gun boat diplomacy over their enormous seabed grab in seasia, and has been busily building, endebting and otherwise following the colonial playbook in Africa.
The PRC are not victims here.

[Zinegata]

The PRC are not victims here.

That's not the point.

The point is Western liberal democracies engage in the exact same kind of imperialistic actions you listed even today. See the invasion of Iraq, the support for Arab Spring rebellions which only ended largely in failure and further repression, and the continued expansion and exploitation of workers by corporations.

Arguing China will be a "better" nation that won't engage in these kinds of actions anymore by being a liberal democracy is therefore a hypocritical and willfully blind argument. The West has in fact done a lot of terrible things while being a "liberal democracy"; it just has a very selective memory and want to pretend that things like the invasion of Iraq are aberrations instead of business as usual.

Why expect Chinese liberal democracy to be different? Why expect they also won't have a selective memory, elect populist leaders, and make war on their neighbors under a lexicon of "national security" and other grand self-rationalizations?

Indeed, many serious China watchers are more scared of a democratic China than an autocratic one. The ordinary Chinese is much more jingoistic and "nationalist" than the CCP. It wouldn't be surprising if a democratic China would end up fighting a major war soon after its first election.

[ray245]

I bet you dont. The thing is, history did not stop after ww2.
China, who was getting the shitty end of the stick for a century, has since annexed Tibet, invaded Vietnam, has been doing a little gun boat diplomacy over their enormous seabed grab in seasia, and has been busily building, endebting and otherwise following the colonial playbook in Africa.
The PRC are not victims here.

Whether they are the victims or not isn't the point. They think they are the victims because of a long historical cultural memory. The more people in the west deny they are victims, the more they would think they are the victims, and they see liberal westerners as having a double standards, irregardless of whether the liberal westerners condone imperialism or not.

Particularly in the case of Hong Kong, it is a touchy issue because HK was created due to western imperialism, and they think of it as having to wait a century for Hong Kong to be returned back to China. They comes from a POV that if the British never attacked China during the opium war can carve out Hong Kong, the people in Hong Kong today would not think of themselves as being non-Chinese due to a 100 years of colonisation.

People in the west will say those are in the past and shouldn't apply to what Chinese today think and see about the world. But that's coming in part from a western world that did benefit massively from colonialism and imperialism. And given that there are many people in the west that continues to think of imperialism as a good thing ( see the British arguing imperialism was a good thing, TODAY), that's kinda understandable.

[ray245]

Indeed, many serious China watchers are more scared of a democratic China than an autocratic one. The ordinary Chinese is much more jingoistic and "nationalist" than the CCP. It wouldn't be surprising if a democratic China would end up fighting a major war soon after its first election.

Yeah, I will not be surprised if populist candidates wins a fully democratic Chinese elections. The majority of the Chinese aren't liberal progressive by any means.

[mr friendly guy]

Whether they are the victims or not isn't the point. They think they are the victims because of a long historical cultural memory. The more people in the west deny they are victims, the more they would think they are the victims, and they see liberal westerners as having a double standards, irregardless of whether the liberal westerners condone imperialism or not.

Come now, Liberal Westerners do have a double standard. KA Pital put it best, but I am going to paraphrase it. If the West does something wrong, liberals expect them to make amends, punish the guilty and then we move on. If China does something wrong, its expected to give up one third of its territory and free <insert region here> and then we move on.

Its even worse when you consider that is likely that these disputed territories want to remain part of China. For example the "Free Tibet" crowd doesn't just want the Tibet autonomous region, they want chunks of Sichuan and Qinghai. Once you add the non Tibetans in there, they outnumber Tibetans at least 10 to 1, so even if every Tibetan of voting age wanted to secede (the TGIE own number is only one third wants secession, more want either more autonomy or status quo), they would still lose by a wide margin. I thought democracy and self determination means that people can decide if they want to be part of China. Similar problem occurs in Xinjiang, but to a lesser extent. We know they are still going to shout <free insert region here> irregardless of what the people want.

Now if someone said, I think China is doing something wrong, they need to do the same thing I demand of the West, punish the guilty,make reforms so it doesn't happen again, and improve the standard of the group which is suffering. I would say, ok lets see what you think is wrong, provide evidence and then we talk solutions. I would not call them a hypocrite. But we all know that is not what they are advocating. They are going secession free <insert region here>.

Even if this thread we see double standard at play. Chinese consumers are just using free speech to boycott a Western organisation, just as pro HK independence people can boycott whatever they want. I mean they claim they are going to boycott Mulan after Liu Yifei said she supported HK police, and that's their speech. I say they can if they want to. But it also applies to the other side. You can very well say both sides are utilising speech, but I agree with one side. However that is not how its going to be viewed. Its going to be viewed as only the HK side is utilising speech, and when the Chinese side does it, why that's suppressing freedom of speech. We see that attitude right in this very thread.

[ray245]

Even if this thread we see double standard at play. Chinese consumers are just using free speech to boycott a Western organisation, just as pro HK independence people can boycott whatever they want. I mean they claim they are going to boycott Mulan after Liu Yifei said she supported HK police, and that's their speech. I say they can if they want to. But it also applies to the other side. You can very well say both sides are utilising speech, but I agree with one side. However that is not how its going to be viewed. Its going to be viewed as only the HK side is utilising speech, and when the Chinese side does it, why that's suppressing freedom of speech. We see that attitude right in this very thread.

I do think you are missing a point of why certain boycott movements are seen as better than others. If people are boycotting the products of someone or some organisation that voiced support for authorities that limits freedom of speech, that served a different purpose from people who are boycotting people/organisations that supports a clampdown in freedom of speech.

It's for the same reason why people might be against the freedom of speech to far-right groups, especially if far-right groups are using it to restrict the freedom of speech of other communities. Karl Popper puts it nicely:

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

[Broomstick]

Moreover, whataboutism is American-invented, whereas your entire pointless rebuttal implies its American-exclusive.

While the US has invented quite a bit of bad stuff over the centuries the US did not invent "whataboutism" - it's logical fallacy and an argument to justify misbehavior that goes back pretty much forever in history, it's nothing new in the world. In the old days it used to be call tu quoque, which has cites as far back as the 1600's. For more about the history and origin of the term see this wiki.

Now that you have been enlightened you may now resume your exchange of vitriol.

[mr friendly guy]

Even if this thread we see double standard at play. Chinese consumers are just using free speech to boycott a Western organisation, just as pro HK independence people can boycott whatever they want. I mean they claim they are going to boycott Mulan after Liu Yifei said she supported HK police, and that's their speech. I say they can if they want to. But it also applies to the other side. You can very well say both sides are utilising speech, but I agree with one side. However that is not how its going to be viewed. Its going to be viewed as only the HK side is utilising speech, and when the Chinese side does it, why that's suppressing freedom of speech. We see that attitude right in this very thread.

I do think you are missing a point of why certain boycott movements are seen as better than others. If people are boycotting the products of someone or some organisation that voiced support for authorities that limits freedom of speech, that served a different purpose from people who are boycotting people/organisations that supports a clampdown in freedom of speech.

It's for the same reason why people might be against the freedom of speech to far-right groups, especially if far-right groups are using it to restrict the freedom of speech of other communities

Yeah, but the examples in these cases are a case of secession vs non secession. You can say China restricts speech in its territory, but its irrelevant when the speech in question is occurring in Western countries. Those people calling for free <insert region here> are still able to shout it in Western countries. Its a bit of red herring, and by portraying all speech from a pro China crowd as suppressing freedom of speech, people are frankly doing what they accuse China of doing.

I would also caution about painting far right groups with such a broad brush. Frankly from what I have seen of European examples, while they are bigoted, I don't recall a specific example of them stating opposing groups are not allowed to say offensive things to them.

[mr friendly guy]

Moreover, whataboutism is American-invented, whereas your entire pointless rebuttal implies its American-exclusive.

While the US has invented quite a bit of bad stuff over the centuries the US did not invent "whataboutism" - it's logical fallacy and an argument to justify misbehavior that goes back pretty much forever in history, it's nothing new in the world. In the old days it used to be call tu quoque, which has cites as far back as the 1600's. For more about the history and origin of the term see this wiki.

Now that you have been enlightened you may now resume your exchange of vitriol.

If you think about it, a lot of fallacies can be boiled down to being red herrings, basically some detail which is irrelevant designed to distract. Lets use an example to illustrate problems with overcalling whataboutism, with this fact about irrelevant details in mind. Lets say a black man and white man both commit the same crime, the white man gets a fine and the black man gets 10 years jail. If the black man's lawyer says, what about the white man, and then lists the bad thing the white mans has done, you could argue its fair to call that a whataboutism. The crimes of the white man is irrelevant to whether his client, has committed a crime. However he says "what about the punishment" the white man receives, then its not irrelevant, because he is not arguing whether his client committed a crime, he is arguing for the sentence, and thus previous sentencing is relevant.

In the above argument Zinegata was involved in, its very relevant to point out the flaws of liberal democracies if your argument is China is bad because its not a liberal democracy. If the argument was China gets a free pass because America is also bad, then its fair to accuse him of using whataboutism, because whether American has done bad things, is irrelevant to whether China has done bad things. However if America gets a free pass (or a more realistically, a lesser "punishment") for doing something worse than China, we are entitled to ask why?

I am going to end this with a paraphrase from Darth Wong. No one is saying the black guy gets off because he is black. We are saying he gets the same punishment as the white guy for the same crime. In which case its a slap on the wrist.

[TheFeniX]

All of which is to say that while eSports may be 'booming' it's still a very niche activity contextual to what is around it and is chump change compared to most mid-tier to minor global competitive activities.

Conceded. TBF, sports authorities have done their own inflation of revenues and viewerships and downplayed the side effects of esports revenue generating, but I'm not going to get into it over a drunk post I made yelling at clouds when I haven't had a dog in this fight for 10 years.

[Broomstick]

In the above argument Zinegata was involved in, its very relevant to point out the flaws of liberal democracies if your argument is China is bad because its not a liberal democracy.

That would have been pertinent if I was addressing any of that. What I was addressing was his claim that the US "invented" whataboutism. THAT is untrue, and was the only thing I was addressing in my post. The rest of what you posted is important, but not the very specific thing I was speaking of in my post.

[mr friendly guy]

In the above argument Zinegata was involved in, its very relevant to point out the flaws of liberal democracies if your argument is China is bad because its not a liberal democracy.

That would have been pertinent if I was addressing any of that. What I was addressing was his claim that the US "invented" whataboutism. THAT is untrue, and was the only thing I was addressing in my post. The rest of what you posted is important, but not the very specific thing I was speaking of in my post.

I concede that my phrasing was a bit confusing. When I said your argument, it would have been more clear if I said if "one's argument." I meant it to indicate more general rather than you specifically. Apologies for the confusion.

[Tiriol]

YOU dragged the British Empire into this by talking about Imperial masters. Don't now go all high and mighty. And we know quite well that the proposed act of legislation would have helped Chinese authorities immensely and was done in their interest. Just saying "sucking up to Imperial masters!" doesn't absolve the Chinese authorities.

No, that's you still sucking Churchill's rotting war criminal dick.

I merely explained what the Hong Kong government actually is. It's a colonial money-laundering outpost. It will be a repressive regime regardless of who the boss is.

For your information, I'm not an American.

I didn't call you an American. I called you a bigot. You can be a bigot without being an American, and that starts by sucking the cock of a long-dead empire and pretending it's some great bastion of freedom when more people died in the Bengal Famine than are supposedly imprisoned in the Xinjiang re-education camps.

Moreover, whataboutism is American-invented, whereas your entire pointless rebuttal implies its American-exclusive. You're too fucking stupid to realize that you fell for American-invented propaganda, so you pretend it's American-exclusive to dodge the reality that you're a gullible lapdog instead of a cool edgelord.

By contrast there have been studies made by your neighbor, Sweden, on the truth of whataboutism. And what they found was that Americans use whataboutism consistently to apologize for their systematic racism of the African-American community in the 1960s. Every time the Soviets or anyone else had the temerity to point out that black Americans had to ride at the back of the bus, the Americans would cover their ears and scream whataboutism.

That's why it's a bigoted argument. That's why anyone who uses the term is a lazy bigot. It was invented to allow bigoted Americans to ignore all criticisms of their racist system, and anyone who keeps using the terms is therefore perpetuating this bigotry.

And guess what? It fucking works, because pandering to racist bigots like you is apparently very easy because you're so fucking stupid. America is still a worse police state for African-Americans even today than China is to its own people. Proportionately speaking, America imprisons more people than China does. African-American disproportionately account for the imprisoned, and most studies indicate that many if not the majority are innocent.

By most sane definitions, that's an actual fucking police state. But sure, whataboutism. You win the Internet you sad racist piece of shit.

Now, I am going to ask very clearly. Defend your statement that I am a racist. Show how I am a racist. Go ahead. Otherwise I am going to ask the mods to intervene.

I’m waiting. And I’m really expecting an answer that does not rely on some in itself a racist belief about my skin colour or nationality.

[Tiriol]

YOU dragged the British Empire into this by talking about Imperial masters. Don't now go all high and mighty. And we know quite well that the proposed act of legislation would have helped Chinese authorities immensely and was done in their interest. Just saying "sucking up to Imperial masters!" doesn't absolve the Chinese authorities.

No, that's you still sucking Churchill's rotting war criminal dick.

I merely explained what the Hong Kong government actually is. It's a colonial money-laundering outpost. It will be a repressive regime regardless of who the boss is.

For your information, I'm not an American.

I didn't call you an American. I called you a bigot. You can be a bigot without being an American, and that starts by sucking the cock of a long-dead empire and pretending it's some great bastion of freedom when more people died in the Bengal Famine than are supposedly imprisoned in the Xinjiang re-education camps.

Moreover, whataboutism is American-invented, whereas your entire pointless rebuttal implies its American-exclusive. You're too fucking stupid to realize that you fell for American-invented propaganda, so you pretend it's American-exclusive to dodge the reality that you're a gullible lapdog instead of a cool edgelord.

By contrast there have been studies made by your neighbor, Sweden, on the truth of whataboutism. And what they found was that Americans use whataboutism consistently to apologize for their systematic racism of the African-American community in the 1960s. Every time the Soviets or anyone else had the temerity to point out that black Americans had to ride at the back of the bus, the Americans would cover their ears and scream whataboutism.

That's why it's a bigoted argument. That's why anyone who uses the term is a lazy bigot. It was invented to allow bigoted Americans to ignore all criticisms of their racist system, and anyone who keeps using the terms is therefore perpetuating this bigotry.

And guess what? It fucking works, because pandering to racist bigots like you is apparently very easy because you're so fucking stupid. America is still a worse police state for African-Americans even today than China is to its own people. Proportionately speaking, America imprisons more people than China does. African-American disproportionately account for the imprisoned, and most studies indicate that many if not the majority are innocent.

By most sane definitions, that's an actual fucking police state. But sure, whataboutism. You win the Internet you sad racist piece of shit.

Now, I am going to ask very clearly. Defend your statement that I am a racist. Show how I am a racist. Go ahead. Otherwise I am going to ask the mods to intervene.

I’m waiting. And I’m really expecting an answer that does not rely on some in itself a racist belief about my skin colour or nationality.

As to the rest of your so-called argument, you really cannot fathom a situatiom where one could, horror of horrors, prefer a liberal democracy to a one-party dictatorship without having bigoted reasons for it. You truly think that everyone is deluded into believing that +America is THE GREATEST!!!” and react accordingly. That makes you a sad, little sack of shit who is willingly stupid. Guess what? Your perverted idea of argument ”whataboutism is a form of American bigotry” doesn’t fly, and neither does your raging hard-on for PRC’s leadership.

[ray245]

Yeah, but the examples in these cases are a case of secession vs non secession. You can say China restricts speech in its territory, but its irrelevant when the speech in question is occurring in Western countries. Those people calling for free <insert region here> are still able to shout it in Western countries. Its a bit of red herring, and by portraying all speech from a pro China crowd as suppressing freedom of speech, people are frankly doing what they accuse China of doing.

I mean if ( whether that's true is another separate point) the Chinese are actively intimidating people from being able to express free speech, then it's still right to call them out on it? Just like you'll do the same to the HKers also actively intimidating Chinese mainlanders from expressing their freedom of speech.

I would also caution about painting far right groups with such a broad brush. Frankly from what I have seen of European examples, while they are bigoted, I don't recall a specific example of them stating opposing groups are not allowed to say offensive things to them.

The alt-right is using such tactics, by labelling people of trying to stop freedom of speech if they no-platform far-right speakers.

Now, I am going to ask very clearly. Defend your statement that I am a racist. Show how I am a racist. Go ahead. Otherwise I am going to ask the mods to intervene.

I’m waiting. And I’m really expecting an answer that does not rely on some in itself a racist belief about my skin colour or nationality.

Before I begin, I would like to point out that I am not saying you are racist. However, I do like to point out that asking people to prove that you are racist is very often a tactic employed by the alt-right when they are accused of racism.

Asking people who accuse someone of being racist to have to prove it is a situation which enables or benefits racists, because it makes it harder for people to accuse racist of being racist.

[mr friendly guy]

I mean if ( whether that's true is another separate point) the Chinese are actively intimidating people from being able to express free speech, then it's still right to call them out on it? Just like you'll do the same to the HKers also actively intimidating Chinese mainlanders from expressing their freedom of speech.

There is a difference between boycotting to get people to change their views or changing personnel and actively physically assaulting someone for saying something you don't like. Boycotting has long been accepted as part of freedom of speech in the West while physical assault is not. The Chinese nationalists have stuck with boycotting for the moment.

[Eulogy]

While you're boycotting Activision Blizzard, you may as well boycott Apple too.

Apple Safari browser sends some user IP addresses to Chinese conglomerate Tencent by default

During the last week, the reality that US companies often bend the knee to China has been thrown into the spotlight. Apple, one of the biggest US tech companies, has appeased China by hiding the Taiwan flag emoji and ignoring US lawmakers when choosing to ban a Hong Kong protest safety app. Now it’s been discovered that Apple, which often positions itself as a champion of privacy and human rights, may be sending some IP addresses from users of its Safari browser on iOS to Chinese conglomerate Tencent – a company with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Apple says that it may send some user IP addresses to Tencent in the “About Safari & Privacy” section of its Safari settings which can be accessed on an iOS device by opening the Settings app and then selecting “Safari > About Privacy & Security.” Under the title “Fraudulent Website Warning,” Apple says:

“Before visiting a website, Safari may send information calculated from the website address to Google Safe Browsing and Tencent Safe Browsing to check if the website is fraudulent. These safe browsing providers may also log your IP address.”

The “Fraudulent Website Warning” setting is toggled on by default which means that unless iPhone or iPad users dive two levels deep into their settings and toggle it off, their IP addresses may be logged by Tencent or Google when they use the Safari browser. However, doing this makes browsing sessions less secure and leaves users vulnerable to accessing fraudulent websites.

It’s unclear when Apple started allowing Tencent and Google to log some user IP addresses but one Twitter user reported seeing this change to Safari as early as the iOS 12.2 beta in February 2019.

Safari is the default browser on iOS devices and according to recent statistics, it’s the most popular mobile internet browser in the US with a market share of over 50%.

Even if people install a third-party browser on their iOS device, viewing web pages inside apps still opens them in an integrated form of Safari called Safari View Controller instead of the third-party browser. Tapping links inside apps also opens them in Safari rather than a third-party browser. These behaviors that force people back into Safari make it difficult for people to avoid the Safari browser completely when using an iPhone or iPad.

Tencent works closely with the Chinese Communist Party. It facilitates government censorship in China through its multi-functional utility app WeChat. The company also released a game pro-Chinese Communist Party game called Clap for Xi Jinping: An Awesome Speech in 2017 which, as the title suggests, encourages users to virtually clap for the Chinese president Xi Jinping. In addition to this, Tencent is reportedly collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party to develop “patriotic” video games.

Given the recent examples of the US tech companies Blizzard and Apple taking punitive actions against apps and video game players, seemingly in an effort to appease China, the revelation that Apple may send user IP addresses to Chinese conglomerate Tencent is worrying.

When you add in the rising tensions in Hong Kong, where China is being blamed for the increasingly violent police tactics that are being used against Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protestors, this revelation is even more concerning.

IP addresses can reveal user locations and be used to profile users across devices. If Tencent logs the IP address of an iPhone or iPad user through its Safe Browsing service, this information could potentially be used to identify the owner of the device by searching for instances of the IP address across Tencent’s other services.

Apple claims at the top of its privacy page, “At Apple, we believe privacy is a fundamental human right.”

Last month, Apple ignored China’s involvement and human rights violations when responding to one of the largest reported iPhone hacks to date. And earlier this year, it censored Chinese language podcasts in China and removed a Chinese artist’s song from Apple Music at the request of the Chinese government.

There's a certain irony in capitalist corporations whoring themselves out to communists, and one that to put it mildly isn't a healthy long-term strategy.