 On my channel, I tend to steer away from covering things that might be considered controversial in nature, at least in regards to something that could, you know, tend to go over into the political side of things because I don't like making political statements, I don't like taking sides, I know it's a slippery slope and it just leads to some very intense conversations that tend to get nobody nowhere as everyone tries to force their own political opinions down each other's throats and that usually never works and you never really convince anyone to change sides, so it is what it is. I'm here to tell you how to vote this upcoming November, I'm here to tell you what to do with your lives, but Sony and PlayStation 5, they have some interesting terminology happening in their end-user license agreement and the reason this end-user license agreement is even me it looked into is because of other things that Sony is doing with not just the PlayStation 5, it technically exists on PlayStation 4, but some of this back to the PlayStation 3 as well, but nobody really realized it because we all just click accept and don't really look back and think twice. One thing that Sony's been under fire for heading into PlayStation 5 launch is they did announce that they will be recording people's conversations, like private conversations on PlayStation 5 in particular and the reason that they're doing this they say is to protect users, so they kind of went back and said well we're only recording like 30 seconds of conversation, like 10 seconds before 10 seconds after, this is for people who are going to report other users, it's a rolling thing, they're not going to keep conversations, this is just what Sony claims, we don't actually know what's happening behind the scenes, it's kind of one of those things like if you remember some stuff, I'm not going to go too deep into this, but when Edward Snowden unveiled a bunch of things the government was doing, it's kind of one of those situations where do you really trust Sony when they say they're not going to keep conversations and when you're going to determine if you're going to ban people based off recorded conversations, it's one of those situations that if you're only going to listen to 30 seconds, are we going to lose context? Because in theory, I could report someone and submit a clip or whatever, right? Because like they're only going to do like five minute snippets and you could take like 30 seconds out of that snippet and report it. Well, if I report a 30 second snippet of someone cussing me out and it conveniently leaves out the part where I might have started the cussing out of that person, someone could get banned without the context of really I started it and they responded, I should be the one that's banned, right? Like it's a it's a context thing. And it's one of those situations where I understand that Sony is trying to protect its users. Members Sony kind of gave those old excuses in the past about why they couldn't have cross play because they had to protect the children. So it's another one of those situations where I feel like they're maybe overstepping their bounds a little. I get wanting to protect people, but it's just kind of like with discord or Skype or anything else. The measures to protect people are already in place. If you know, you can block people, you can mute people like the measures are already there for users to take care of this themselves. Sony doesn't really need to step in and be the voice police. That's just my opinion. I'm going to stick with that opinion because I think that it is wrong for any company to record private conversations on any platform. Just give the tools necessary for users to handle it on their end, which already exists, you know, with the mute features, the blocking features, all that jazz, there's all you know, parents can go on there and literally, you know, block voice chat altogether on some games and stuff like that. So parental controls to prevent kids from even dealing with this situation. So yeah, to be honest, I think that the power should be in the users, the tool should be in the user's hand. And we shouldn't be relying on companies doing any of this stuff. But, but it gets a little bit worse. And it gets a little bit worse because because Sony is recording, people decided to look at the end user license agreement, and you'll see the usual harassment and policies and all that jazz, which need to exist and are good. But what you'll also run into is some interesting things that deal with China in particular. Now, if you live outside of China, you can say who cares? And I can completely understand the sentiment. But PlayStation does not allow you to use your account or your PlayStation network in any way to create, reproduce or publish or disseminate any information, which opposes the basic principles of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, endangers the security of the people's public over China, they've all just people of Republic of China's state records or secrets jeopardizes the sovereignty or unification of the people of the People's Republic of China damages the honor and interest of the PRC violates PRC policies on religion or propaganda, heresies or superstition, disseminates rumors disrupts social order or undermines social stability, disseminates obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, instigates others to commit crimes is prohibited by PRC laws, administration regulations and other provisions. Now, on the surface, this doesn't sound like anything out of the ordinary. Why would they have this Chinese specific law? This seems to be pretty much in line with the rest of their end user license agreement, which is basically don't be a jerk. But if you actually look at what this is specifically dealing with, it's dealing with a political situation in China. And these rules that exist in the end user license agreement are targeting Hong Kong, which it's a whole mess of stuff. Again, I said this gets a little political I hate getting political, but it gets into a whole mess of things where the People's Republic of China are trying to enforce and the overall law of China onto Hong Kong. And for those who don't know, Hong Kong is kind of independent of China, even though it's part of the country. It's it's a really sticky situation. Basically, Hong Kong is a more free area, more democratic area, a more, you know, in line with kind of how, you know, United States and other places run. And the People's Republic of China is definitely not that. And they are trying to suppress it and force Hong Kong to conform to the rest of Chinese law. And the thing is, the People's Republic of China are the exact people that are enacting slavery and moving certain people to making, you know, working in factories, including at Foxconn. This has been a controversy we've briefly touched on in the past, in regards to electronics manufacturing, because there is technically slave labor involved in it. And this is because of the People's Republic of China, even though they are denying it. Obviously, we can talk about the COVID-19 stuff, and how they doctored numbers. And it's just crazy, right? I'm not here to get into conspiracy theories. The pandemic is real. Wear masks, be safe out there. I'm just saying that China does a lot of really bad things. Hong Kong has always been kind of the exception to this. You've actually been able to buy switches in China long before China allowed, you know, electronic devices to be sold there. Because again, Hong Kong operated in a bubble. Well, the People's Republic of China is trying to burst that bubble, use their military and suppress people who are trying to speak out against the government. Imagine if in the United States, you know, we weren't allowed to speak our opinions one way or another on the president or the policies or anything. We didn't have the freedom of speech. They are trying to suppress freedom of speech. And Sony is being complicit in that suppression with their device. Now again, outside of China, you know, who really cares? This rule only applies to people that live in China. But the thing is, is this means that PlayStation is placating China. They are you know, I went to the end user license agreement for switch, which also exists in China. And they do not have specific rules like this in their end users license agreement. I went through Microsoft's end users license agreement. And they too do not have any specific rules specific to the People's Republic of China. And their devices are all also available in China. So these aren't rules that need to exist for the platforms to be sold in China. This is likely a back doors behind scenes handshake between the People's Republic of China and Sony that maybe lets them get cheaper manufacturing, maybe lets them, you know, which again, does affect things, maybe lets them get certain perks and benefits in the retail space, whatever the case might be. And I'm not saying that like Nintendo and all these companies are innocent. I mean, Nintendo works with 10 cents and does some crappy things in China. It is what it is. China is all sorts of messed up in many different ways. But yeah, it's very interesting that Sony here is basically bowing down to the government of China. And when they don't need to to sell their products. And everyone just kind of didn't notice because nobody ever reads these license agreements. And you might be like, Well, you know, who cares, people don't read license agreements all the time, you know, we're already on social media, we're on YouTube, did you really read YouTube's end user license agreement before you made an account here and like, no, I didn't. Most people haven't. And but but it is concerning when this is a company that's recording voice conversations, actively admitting they're recording, you know, five minutes of voice recordings, but only 30 seconds, it's a rolling thing. They delete things they claim like how many times have we caught companies in lies about this kind of stuff. So again, I don't know what this means. There are those out there saying that we should boycott Sony and the PlayStation five. I don't know. It's tough for me as someone who covers these platforms to consider boycotting. I still am excited for PlayStation five and the games like, you know, this this thing doesn't affect me in the US because I'm not necessarily agreeing to it in the US because we could talk about whatever we want on PlayStation. I mean, the voice recording thing obviously affects us. But it I don't know what Sony is doing. Okay, I'm not trying to get political. I just don't know what they're doing. They've been making these really funky decisions now. I don't know. Like the last five or so years. It's really weird. These things where Sony feels like they need to be the government basically. It's weird. Remember, I mean, we already talked about the weird situation where they wouldn't allow cross play for a while because they needed to protect the children as if other companies aren't doing that and protecting the children in a game owned by another company. Hello Minecraft like it. I didn't. It's just such a weird situation to me to be completely honest. I don't know what's happening. Sony did move their headquarters technically from Japan to California at one point. So there is that I just don't know that this is a really weird situation. And I want to know your guys' thoughts on it because I think this is just like the latest in a line of things that Sony is doing behind the scenes that they're hoping people don't notice. And when they make public comments on it, it never comes off that well. I don't know. I just don't know. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I guess is the best way to put it. It makes me feel uncomfortable about buying a PlayStation 5. I'm probably still gonna buy one. Call me a hypocrite. I'm still gonna play the games. Call me a hypocrite. I'm still excited. Call me a hypocrite. That's fine. I'll open the Amen. I'm being a hypocrite. I just I'm a lot more uncomfortable now and I'm and if nothing else, I'm probably gonna end up playing all my multi-platform games on on the Xbox and the Switch. I just I just I don't know, guys. I don't know. You guys let me know what you think about this. I hate being negative all the time. Like I I'm legitimately excited for PlayStation 5 but I'm also I can't ignore some of these things that Sony keeps doing behind the scenes that just I don't know guys. Like it doesn't make me feel good. I guess is the like something just feels off at Sony. So something's just not right. I don't know what it is. I don't know if they're just getting you know big paychecks behind the scenes from from places that I make them make these decisions. I don't know but I something just doesn't feel right. I don't know. You guys don't know what you think. Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe this is a big nothing burger to you. I am with Andrew Robert Jansson from The Tender Prime. I'll have links in the description to the sources on the voice chat stuff and obviously the unusual license agreement that has this China stuff in it. Thank you guys so much for tuning in and I'll catch you guys in the next video.