
Gamers propose punishing Blizzard by flooding it with GDPR requests - rahuldottech
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/df0zx5/upset_about_blizzards_hk_ruling_heres_what_to_do
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pdyck
I have a Hearthstone package on NPM which gets a few downloads everyday (also
from China). Yesterday I removed everything in it and now module.exports is
„光復香港 時代革命“ instead of Hearthstone data.

[https://github.com/pdyck/hearthstone-
db](https://github.com/pdyck/hearthstone-db)

~~~
hkai
I don't like using GitHub for politics.

~~~
wickedsickeune
How is this politics. This is a stand against a tyrant, this has nothing to do
with political opinions. As a human being you have an obligation to stand
against tyrants, nothing political about that.

~~~
mwyah
I'd argue that this is completely and absolutely political. Just deciding that
this guy is a tyrant is political.

~~~
Isinlor
Not doing anything is also political. Everything is political in social
context.

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mikorym
I would also suggest cancelling your account, even if you intend on reopening
it later. These kind of events are short lived; you need a _seemingly_ strong
drive of people who want to cancel their accounts, even it is only for short
while. Maximum impact is what the CEO and management can see _now_ and _en
masse_.

~~~
yoaviram
Here's an easy way to send a GDPR erasure request: [https://opt-
out.eu/?company=activision.com](https://opt-out.eu/?company=activision.com)

~~~
mikorym
Can you do this even if you are not an EU resident?

~~~
LocalH
Even if such requests are ultimately discarded, it would slightly increase the
burden they have to process such requests.

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duxup
I really think cancelling accounts would be more effective.

A mass request like is being proposed would just make Blizzard script out a
response.

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nixpulvis
I'm canceling my account! I'm a long time Blizz fan, and ex-WoW player, who
still pays for my account for some sentimental reason.

~~~
Skunkleton
I just resubscribed for classic. Cancelled this morning.

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pkaye
Why don't people just end their subscriptions? A financial hit will get their
attention.

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olliej
The problem is all recent blizzard games require a net connection, so it's not
terminating your subscription, but rather stop playing games that you have
already paid for.

~~~
Razengan
I think there are still pirate servers out there.

~~~
olliej
But that would be illegal - I was initially thinking of this as a joke in the
replay, but then I realized under US law at least this _would_ be a crime.

To be clear: a company can arbitrarily break something you paid for by
terminating your account, or just taking the servers online, that is
completely legal. That company can then sue you if you connect to someone
else's servers or bring up your own, because that is illegal copyright
infringement or contractual violation (and possibly CFAA violation because
idiocy).

~~~
zygimantasdev
If you paid for the game client(wow) it is not illegal to play in private
servers

~~~
leereeves
In the US, it is illegal (copyright infringement) to run a private server.

[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/08/the-88-million-
server...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/08/the-88-million-server-
private-wow-server-op-loses-big/)

And given that, a lawyer could argue that paying to play on (or even donating
to) a private server is contributory copyright infringement. I don't know if
that has been tested in court.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_copyright_infring...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_copyright_infringement)

But oftentimes you can get away with it; few game companies go after small
private servers.

------
viraptor
If they're actually flooded with requests, someone will likely create a quick
set of scripts once and they'll handle it semi automatically soon. Blizzard is
a software company, they know how to do that. I'm not sure it will impact them
in any significant way.

~~~
xiphias2
It's never a quick script for a big company.

I'd hate to be the engineer who has to talk to all people and ask them about
how they are processing user data, where are they storing logs, what happens
to it.... it's the most boring work you can imagine for a programmer.

At the same time it's great that people can learn about these things.

~~~
kabacha
I fully agree with your first statement - not so much with the second one:
data hacking can be fun!

But yeah there are no quick scripts in corporate software, even though
Blizzard claims to use agile development I doubt the effectiveness of it. I
remember some small vital features/fixes in world of warcraft would be delayed
to next expension because "they already had a road map in place" \- agile my
ass lol.

~~~
xiphias2
Data hacking is fun.

But what about reading law, understanding if your company is compliant to the
law or not, making those compliance changes, and knowing that if you made a
mistake the company takes a huge financial responsibility?

My girlfriend was doing these things for her 2 person software company, and
she was more scared about making a mistake than having fun.

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tjpnz
I see that BlizzCon's coming up. Like last year I'm sure there'll be ample
opportunity to give the company a bloody nose.

~~~
philipov
Let's see if people remember that long, or if this is just flash in the pan.

~~~
tjpnz
If South Park decide to make China a recurring plot point over the next month
someone might.

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mdorazio
I doubt this would actually work as intended, but it's fun to see novel
approaches to weaponizing the legal system against large corporations like
this.

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14
I am curious since people are saying that Blizzard will just write a script to
deal with all the requests, I was wondering is there a list of European names
with addresses and emails and such that the request they are sending is asking
for? If such a list did exist then could not someone script something to
automatically swamp Blizzard, or any company for that matter?

~~~
Symbiote
It's only legal to make a subject data request for your own data.

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dudus
I'm all for protesting this against blizzard. Stop playing their games, stop
watching it on Twitch or YouTube, organize protests outside their offices and
at blizzcon. But abusing GDPR seems like the wrong way to go about it, should
cause virtually no impact to them financially or publicly and can only create
arguments to limit GDPR protections

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Kiro
I don't like that GDPR is being abused like this. It will only hurt GDPR and
likely not hurt the intended target at all and if it works it will encourage
more abuse which will lead to GDPR being softened.

My point is that we should use GDPR for what it was made for and use other
means to put pressure on Blizzard.

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edoceo
What about a flood of small claims court? In USA it may be more effective?

~~~
olliej
what crime or contract violation have they committed? My (NAL) understanding
is you can't sue/take-to-small-claims a service or company because of what
they did to _someone else_. Only victims of malfeasance can go to court - even
class actions need a number of people who are directly effected to start the
lawsuit, before subsequently extending the small scale case to a class action.

In this case modern T&Cs give companies carte blanche to dry service to anyone
for any (or no) reason, so you'd have to demonstrate it was a bias against a
protected classification - race, gender, maybe age - but even then, US courts
have repeatedly stated that the constitution applies _only_ to US citizens.

~~~
Domenic_S
You can sue anyone for anything.

~~~
Aunche
Even filing small claims costs money, and the cases would promptly be thrown
out.

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hkai
A modest proposal: what if companies advocated neither for left wing nor for
right wing politics? They could, for example, produce a product instead.

~~~
danaris
Neutrality always favors the tyrant.

There is no apolitical position in a situation like this.

~~~
La1n
Not even "the tyrant", it always favors the status quo. I do agree that there
is no apolitical position here, I would even argue that everything we do, or
not do, is political to some level.

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Porthos9K
About time gamers did something useful.

~~~
cookie_monsta
Like protest against a fellow gamer being denied access to a gaming platform?
Given your premise it's hard to see the logic.

~~~
ggggtez
He essentially lost his job for political speech.

See the NBA story from today where the NBA refused to censor a player for
supporting HK. See why this isn't just about "a gamer"?

~~~
flukus
Political speech they agree with.

We crossed these sorts of lines long ago but it was political speech they
disagreed with then, so it's only bad now. If everyone had been more inclined
to defend peoples right to views they don't agree with then we wouldn't be
here now.

Plenty here were fine with Stallman being fired over his personal views, now
they're seeing the other side.

~~~
etchalon
Your argument is people should be just as upset by things which don't upset
them as they are by things which do upset them.

It's a weird argument.

~~~
flukus
It's not that they should be just as upset, it's that they don't have any sort
of principled stance and are in the cheer squad when the same thing is
happening to the other side. They cheer people losing jobs because they
disagree with them and get upset that the same thing happens to people they
agree with, at least at the group level.

Should you be able to lose your job, be cutoff from a private service, be
banned from a project because of your public opinions? It's a yes/no question
and modern society appears to be converging on yes. This is a consequence of
that decision. An easy to see consequence that many of us warned about but got
drowned out of the conversation being called racists, christian
fundamentalist, pedophile apologists and everything else when we speak for
their rights.

So congratulations to the people that cheered Stallmans firing, various de-
platforming techniques, codes of conduct, etc, you've normalized this and
given the CCP all the weapons they need to control speech in the west.

~~~
johnny22
You don't seem to think it's possible to be for "deplatforming" someone, and
against "deplatforming" someone else. That's an odd take. I fail to see how
that's incompatible.

~~~
luckylion
I believe the parent is saying that the claims to be "against deplatforming"
are fake when the same people happily supported deplatforming before. It's
just a tactic to say that deplatforming itself is bad, what they actually mean
is "deplatforming someone I like is bad". Saying that is fine, pretending it's
more than that is dishonest.

~~~
etchalon
I don't believe I've seen anyone say that they're against deplatforming, while
being for deplatforming.

What I think instead is that people who were against previous de-platforming
(whatever their reason) want to use this situation, which is obviously
egregious and cowardly on the part of Blizzard, to muddy the water.

~~~
luckylion
Isn't that the same, only in reverse? "Oh you're not okay with deplatforming,
you're only saying that because you disagree with the person deplatformed this
time".

It's hard to prove the innermost opinions, but I do believe that there's a lot
of outrage coming, among others, from people who are absolutely fine with
deplatforming and consider it a valid tactic but don't consider that player a
valid target. There definitely are others who are against deplatforming on
principle. They are consistent, but I don't think all are. Of course, anybody
can change their mind any time, and if this incident converts the proponents
of deplatforming, then the next case will be very different.

~~~
etchalon
I doubt this incident would sour people on the general idea of de-platforming,
anymore than people would sour on the concept of prison if someone innocent
was found incarcerated.

De-platforming is a consequence, and the debate is not "is de-platforming OK?"
but "when is de-platforming OK?"

