I’ll admit I was skeptical of these points bc there are no links or resources to back em up, so I did a little research.
So Tencent is a ridiculously large conglomerate holding company whose investments in video games ALONE pile up fast:
(Outside of video games, Tencent also invests in “search engine[s], e-commerce, retail, real estate, software, virtual reality, ride-sharing, banking, financial services, fintech, consumer technology, computer technology, automobile, film production, movie ticketing, music production, space technology, natural resources, smartphones, big data, agriculture, medical services, cloud computing, social media, IT, advertising, streaming media, artificial intelligence, robotics, UAVs, food delivery, courier services, e-book, internet services, education, and renewable energy.” Needless to say, the company has a LOT of influence and power.)
Regarding OP’s mention of the Hong Kong protests -- Tencent made a partnership with the NBA to secure rights to stream its U.S. games in China, but in October 2019, when Houston Rockets general manager Morey expressed support for the protesters in Hong Kong, “Tencent began sending out refunds to customers after cancelling the broadcast of NBA games" due to NBA executive manager Adam Silver’s support of Morey’s “freedom of political expression.” (x)
Regarding OP’s mention of censorship -- oh boy there’s a lot of info that proves their rampant censorship. Most notably, Tencent owns the social media app WeChat (which has “a billion active daily users”) and uses it to facilitate Chinese government surveillance and censorship. Millions of WeChat conversations were found to be relayed to police; people have been interrogated and arrested due to their private conversations. (There have been ”penalties against numerous WeChat users for mocking President Xi Jinping, criticizing judicial officials, commenting on massive floods, sharing information about human rights abuses, or expressing views related to their persecuted religion or ethnicity.”) Also, WeChat SIGNIFICANTLY distorts the news available to its users by using AI to find and delete select topics (including in 2018, the “deletions from some 4,000 public accounts...[of] major news stories like the U.S.-China trade dispute, the arrest in Canada of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the #MeToo movement and public health scandals”). (x)
Regarding OP’s mention of ripping off other companies -- Tencent’s founder and chairman, Pony Ma, has famously said, “[To] copy is not evil.” There are plenty of allegations and remarks out there about his inclination toward copying.
Regarding OP’s mention of Apple -- at least in iOS 13, Apple’s “Safari browser uses Tencent’s Safe Browsing system to help fight malicious webpages--but Tencent may log IP addresses in the process.” Apple’s also had many issues with surveillance and censorship in China. (x)
Regarding OP’s mention of Tencent’s money-grabbing -- their popular technique of gaining revenue from games is to publish “free-to-play” games, such as Pokemon Unite, and then include in-game transactions so people will pay *after* having gotten into the swing of the game.
TL;DR: Tencent is a despicable company whose hand in a Pokemon game should be a red flag. Don’t support this company.
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