I was also surprised the post focusses on Rus/Iran when Australia, UK, and many more countries (Malaysia, Thailand) have/are introducing laws to prevent large swaths of free speech (banning mediums by age, banning conversation by topic, or by making speaking one's mind online too risky, as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech').
Yes. I think social media or app bans should count as well, as well as consequences for things posted on social media which are simply opinions. I think killing of journalists should count as well (so probably India, Israel, etc.)
And I think also frivolous suits lodged by the govt at people for their speech. So that would include suing Twitter users for making jokes about the FBI director girlfriend, etc. One of the biggest things to censor speech the US is doing is forcing the sale of TikTok to government friendly group. There are many ways governments censor our speech, and they seem, sadly, to be increasing worldwide
Which is very cultural dependent as well. "Not being able to log in on TikTok if you are under 16" is not "preventing free speech". And "having no access to pornhub" is not preventing free speech either. Edit: TBC: this is not me defending these laws or rules.
E.g. Freedom of speech in the US, is rather narrow. It merely states you may "speak, write, and print with freedom" but not that you may do so anywhere, on any platform, on private property. It doesn't state that such speech, writings or printings must reach everyone.
The UNHCR article 19 goes further, though. But it doesn't automatically apply to the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
It includes `... and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers`.
And all these only apply to governments. Many of the examples you mention, aren't government-imposed but imposed by private entities (who, granted, often pre-emptively self-censor). E.g. certain words used on Instagram or in Yourube videos will hurt monetization, or will cause it's discovery or promotion to severely degrade; which is why people use phrases like "unalived". So let's not pretend the US is any good in this.
Dutch culture used to be rather free with nudity in movies and on TV. Every Dutch movie from before the era of US streaming services had at least a pair of naked boobies bouncing around. But this, and in it's wake the entire culture has become more prude-ish. A form of cultural colonialism by the US. Not terrible, but a good example of private companies imposing self-censorship even in places where it really is not needed. IANAL, but I'm quite certain youtube would be allowed to run videos with nudity just fine in most of (nothern?) Europe. But they don't.
Restrictions on adult websites are invariably extremely political. PornHub gets tailored bans while the Reddits and Twitters gleefully serve up gargantuan amounts of pornography; payment processors threaten to wreck Itch and Steam for including 18+ games while Ani is sexting with children.
>"Not being able to log in on TikTok if you are under 16" is not "preventing free speech". And "having no access to pornhub" is not preventing free speech either.
Right. It's having to profile yourself under the excuse of not letting kids use TikTok or PornHub.
On day one the UKs porn ban was used to censor political speech.
Discussion and images of the protests around migrant hotels were age restricted because they contained adult content (racist content, fighting and burning things).
This age restriction meant that only logged in, age verified, users could see the content. Loads of adults are not age verified.
This is censorship of the news and political speech.
> E.g. Freedom of speech in the US, is rather narrow. It merely states you may "speak, write, and print with freedom" but not that you may do so anywhere, on any platform, on private property. It doesn't state that such speech, writings or printings must reach everyone.
> The UNHCR article 19 goes further, though. But it doesn't automatically apply to the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human... It includes `... and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers`.
I have no idea why you think that Article 19 goes farther. It does not say that you may speak anywhere, on any platform, or on private property, and it doesn't say that that speech must reach everyone, which is a bizarre requirement anyway. It isn't a demand that all media carry all speech, and hasn't been treated that way by any of its signatories.
Worse, the text doesn't say that all information and ideas can be expressed, and it doesn't put any restrictions on governments in restraining the types of information and ideas that can be expressed.
The only thing it absolutely guarantees is the freedom to silently hold an opinion, a thing which it never had any ability to restrict.
The 1st Amendment is an actual right of free speech against the government. I'm not sure why you think that an actual, binding restriction on the government is weak compared to nothing. It's the only thing that keeps the US from passing the laws on speech and expression (that many people in the US would desire) that Europe passes regularly.
The US has to do stuff like connecting speech to other crimes as an aggravating factor, applying speech restrictions to places where the rights of citizens don't apply and the government is granted a lot of latitude, or applying speech restrictions to government contracting guidelines. And any of these things are liable to be struck down at any moment as unconstitutional by an adverse court decision.
But back to the Declaration, it's important to remember, of course, it has absolutely no legal force. That's reserved for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which basically copies Article 19 but adds:
The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
(a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
(b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.
Effectively meaning that speech must be free unless it is restricted.
Then, just for kicks, Article 20 in the Covenant is simply two more mandatory restrictions on speech:
Article 20
1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
These are two categories of speech unambiguously* protected in the US. Also two categories of speech happily engaged in by the governments of signatories, and used against the citizens of signatories who contradict government messages of war and bigotry. This is done because the words "propaganda" and "hatred" are undefined, unlike simple words like "government" and "speech."
-----
* Other than what has been called incitement to "imminent violence" which means that you're literally coordinating a violent act between a group of people which will happen right now.
"as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech'"
Are you serious here?
In russia you get problems for calling a war a war and worse problems if you say it is a bad war.
In UK you certainly can call a war a war and you can critize the government or other people all day long. What you cannot do is calling for violence against them. Or do you have counterexamples?
Because this thread started in a discussion about the United Kingdom, I think it is relevant to cite how this exact scenario did happen in the United Kingdom.
Elizabeth Kinney was arrested for a homophobic slur used privately in a text message to a third party -- not even a public comment -- against a man who physically beat her. The man served no jail time for beating her.
"The defendant and the victim in this matter had been friends but had a falling out which resulted in an incident on the October 27, 2024 whereby abusive and homophobic text messages were sent to the victim causing her alarm and distress."
Yes, the prosecutor defined the "victim" in this case as the third party receiving the text messages. They were so harmed by hearing someone who beat the defendant until she had a brain injury called a slur that the only remedy was bust into her house with a swat team to put her in a jail cell, instead of having the "victim" block and cut ties with the sender.
I didn't misrepresent the situation it all. It is exactly as I described.
11 armed people is a functional equivalent of a SWAT team. My statement was hyperbolic. If you serve someone a court summons for a bullshit charge it is a threat of violence against their person. And the charge was bullshit. And the threat of violence was followed up with force.
I'm not lying. I'm also not Christian at all! Never claimed to be.
Sorry, mixed you up with someone else in this thread.
I don't believe that 11 armed people turned up to arrest her. I've never heard of such a thing.
Edit: ok, I'm going to assume you had no idea that UK police officers are not routinely armed. Armed officers are specifically trained and only deployed when the suspect is thought to be armed. Most of those were probably IT to check computers and devices.
She pled guilty to the charge on the advice of her lawyer.
Edit 2: actually the more I read on this the less I believe. An initial contact by the police would be 2 police officers, they would knock at the door and ask to speak to you. How did they get a warrant to get in? Is this all completely bullshit?
At this point, assertions such as these are a form of ad hominem fallacy against half of society. You are discrediting the multitude of sources who have covered this story because of the nature of the speaker while no hardline liberal outlets have covered this story at all and presented a counterargument. If you want to have an alternative narrative, you need to link a major outlet showing her to be a liar. The case has been presented to the public. You don't like the people presenting the case. That doesn't invalidate the case. You must, at this point, present a member of your team making a reasonable, evidenced based deconstruction of her claims. The fact that there isn't any coverage from your side at all of this incredibly well televised and written embarrassment for the legitimacy of crown prosecutors speaks volumes.
The UK is extremely litigious in regards to libel. Her lying would be an act of public libel against the crown prosecutor. She went on TV to talk about it. It's been well covered in everything from the IB Times to The Sun to the Daily Mail (as linked above), as well as fully televised on Piers Morgan. Naturally the team you obviously root for can just refuse to cover any prosecutions which are embarrassing for them and you can simply smugly say "well it's not in any source I personally recognize as valid so it didn't happen."
You can explain it away all you want. Those sources are garbage. They pay for stories, don't confirm sources, or do anything else required of journalism. I get you may be GenZ and have been fed garbage soup your whole life about how "all news bad", but fyi there are still some publications with journalistic standards. You might as well add the National Enquirer from the US. Your sources are such sensationalist rags that they were selling attention long before the internet.
It's not ad-hominem it's ad-practices. For all you know every single one of those articles is based on the same half-baked rumor.
Firstly, IB Times is one of the biggest news sources in existence. They own Newsweek. They do not pay for stories, and they do confirm sources, as they are an institutional capitalized outlet operating out of the UK (the friendliest jurisdiction for libel litigation in the world) that does not want to be sued out of existence. They are not a politicized outlet and generally swing left-wing, in contrast to some of the other sources.
All the sources you claim have standards repeated corporate-state lies during COVID (I know this because they all did). They have zero integrity, they are just mouthpieces for a government that would cover up its lies and never have accountability. I am not GenZ and your assertion that this is a generational issue is another form of ad hominem attack, showing your own personal willingness to dismiss speakers on the basis of perceived identity, as well as fraudulently attribute their speech to groups that you perceive as intellectually lesser. Regardless, it is her word and the case records against the UK government. The latter has been caught lying countless times and is immune from prosecution for doing so, while she and the publications in question can be held accountable for any false claims. Ergo, they have skin in the game, they are taking the risk, and the government is not, and you should assume that she is telling the truth as the incentives are aligned with her to do so.
No bigotry at all. It has nothing to do with his ethnicity. Just that the guy and his followers are notably biased, and they are open about it. Sorry you misunderstood as bigotry my pointing out the clear bias of the owners and your incorrect attribution of ownership. Look at the content section of your original link about IBT. The rag is clearly not run on sound journalistic practices.
Nope. It's about him being vocally biased and claiming his purpose in media is specific to an agenda. That agenda is specifically not journalism. So yeah... Really doesn't have anything to do with the motives you are falsely attributing to me. Might want to read your own sources before you start flinging accusations.
You can try to twist my words however you want, but it seems your usual targets are much more easily manipulated. Sorry buddy.
That is false. There are still decent outlets dedicated to journalism. Yeah, besos and buddies are fkn once reputable journalistic sources. But there are still independent outlets focused on journalistic integrity.
The source is somewhat trustable mainstream but not really good, as already the headline is wrong. The other person was not jailed for insults against the rapists, but threats of violence. And that is a attack on the state monopol of violence itself, hence the harsh sentence.
But indeed, the rulings against the rapists don't seem allright and very much out of balance with the other sentence.
It appears that the ruling regarding the rapes was not so straight forward [1], certainly not something that you can use as a one-line argument. There are also other articles describing what presumably happened there in 2020.
Regarding the case of 'Maja R.', here's a summary [2] (e.g. she didn't show up for the first two hearings [3] - that would certainly raise the anger of the righteous if somebody not in their favor did that).
I'm in doubt whether this one case is sufficient to prove the downward spiral that some people claim to perceive (it was also brought up in context of migration here on HN recently, and from the sources which I could find I‘m not sure it fully qualifies there either).
I've been hearing lots of crazy things about people getting arrested in the UK for posting "memes" or things like that. So I decided to look for examples. All the examples I can find are clearly hate speech, policed more strongly than I would prefer but not that much more strongly, if I'm honest.
The most egregious case I could find was someone arrested for a meme of a pride flag morphing into a swastika. Probably not arrest worthy but perhaps it was the last straw for someone with a history of hate speech.
It's also hard to find examples because everyone writing about this has an agenda. So if anyone can find examples of people being arrested for things that are clearly jokes or memes rather than clearly hate speech, I'm curious to see them as well.
Why on earth would you support arresting people for any speech, hate or otherwise? It is just so obviously a terrible idea that has been regurgitated over and over for thousands of years, countless books, wars, philosophical treatise and here we are. No wonder we aren't going to make it.
I am very much pro free speech, but I do draw the line with implicit or explicit threats of violence. And this line is debatable, sure, but saying any words are just free speech? To escalate the example, Hitler giving the order to exterminate the jews was just free speech?
> I am very much pro free speech, but I do draw the line with implicit or explicit threats of violence. And this line is debatable, sure, but saying any words are just free speech?
Hard to say without evidence of the intent and records of the context.
> Hitler giving the order to exterminate the jews was just free speech?
That is clear but. It was directly ordering murder.
Direct calls to violence have been crimes for a long time, so has conspiracy to organise violence. Hate speech laws go far beyond that.
> I've been hearing lots of crazy things about people getting arrested in the UK for posting "memes" or things like that.
Several (christians) people in the UK have been arrested for "praying in their heads" outside of an abortion facility.
I don't find it classy to go pray for unborn babies that are getting "killed" but that's being arrested for a thought crime and it's not OK.
But then hundreds of muslims regularly openly praying in the streets even though the country is covered with mosques: not an issue. Nothing to see here. All perfectly normal.
The pro-muslim / anti-christian two-tier policy in the UK is just wild.
It's illegal to protest outside of abortion centers for very good reason, because it targets vulnerable women going through a difficult medical procedure. These people were arrested for protesting outside an abortion clinic. They can go and "pray in their heads" literally anywhere else in the entire country and they won't get arrested. They can even stage full on peaceful protests against abortion and they won't get arrested. They just can't do it next the actual clinics.
The first part of what you say is true. You can be arrested for what silent prayer with no outward sign - in other words for what was going in in your head. It is a thought crime. There are also arrests for reasonable free speech - for example holding up a placard offering to talk to women who were coerced into having an abortion.
The second part is nonsense. Anyone of any religion or none doing the same thing would be committing the same crime. It is perfectly legal to pray in the street except close to a place offering abortions.
The flaw in your argument is that it assumes a clear and workable distinction between "a joke" and "obvious hate speech." Yet one of the strongest objections to the very concept of "hate speech" is precisely that we lack a reliable way to stop the term from expanding indefinitely.
The case of Count Dankula is a textbook example: it is plainly a joke, and interpreting it as Nazi promotion or hate speech requires an extraordinary degree of bad faith. And yet, that is exactly how it was treated.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/youtube-count-dankula-mark-m...
This is what I mean by everywhere having an agenda. Because if you just read that Vice article you'll come away thinking he's a "Scottish comedian" who was just joking around to annoy his girlfriend. And after all, they're well known to like off color jokes, the Scottish. This is clearly unfair.
But if you dig a bit deeper, you'll find out that he soon after became a member of the far right UKIP party and was considering running for MEP. Also, his YouTube channel had over a million subscribers, of which his girlfriend was not one. So the reality is not that he's just a Scottish comedian, but rather he's also a far right political wannabe using his platform to spread anti-Semitic hate speech in the form of "jokes".
So perhaps "making anti-Semitic jokes for your girlfriend" should be treated differently than "making anti-Semitic jokes for your million YouTube followers"? At the very least, that is what happened here.
It's also important to note the context that there is a massive and growing online hate speech problem and has been for several decades now.
The arrest does seem to have radicalized this guy. But he's just one person, and he was popular enough to get support from a ton of famous people, and no doubt his million YouTube followers. I would need to see more data before I can form an well founded opinion on whether these arrests work or not. Perhaps they do work as a deterrent for the kinds of people that don't get Ricky Gervais publicly standing up for them.
So we come to the conclusion that this is not just a violation of freedom of speech, but also persecution of political opponents? The situation didn't look any better.
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the state arrests someone for a joke, and that person, feeling persecuted, joins an anti-establishment or far-right group, the state cannot then say, "See? We were right to arrest him because he's now a member of that group."
You are using Meechan’s political actions in 2018 and 2019 to justify a legal conviction for a video made in 2016 (which you said happened "soon after").
"The flaw in your argument is that it assumes a clear and workable distinction between "a joke" and "obvious hate speech"
That is usually easy derived from the context and the cases I know of "missunderstanding a joke" was rather deliberate misinterpretation of the law to get someone out of line.
Ah yes, that famous "joke" which evolves a Nazi salute after antisemitic phrases are said. I think Israel is undermining the Jewish cause with their current label-everything-we-dont-like-as-antisemitic rhetoric. But this "joke" is probably where the line should be drawn for actual antisemitic behaviour.
Whether the person was an antisemite or not, just don't go there. There is no reason to. As a joke between you and your girlfriend, maybe. But not broadcasting it to the whole world on Youtube.
Israel is surrounded by a ocean of minority genociding imperialist islamo supremacists using proxies and petrodollars to subvert the umbilical keeping it alive. Up to and including pushing narratives about a genocide that never happened.
It has ever right to be worried and frankly seeing how much activist media and the west republished terrorist propaganda.. they are right.
The "the UK is a police state" meme is something amplified by the US right wing (it's always people from the US going nuts about it on HN, or those that consume too much American media). Like you say, it's dumb that the police are wasting their time moderating Twitter, but if someone (or a group) was verbally abusing another person enough in real life they would be arrested.
The law should be changed to somehow accommodate assholes on social media abusing people. Probably by forcing the social media platforms to moderate their shit. What little moderation there was, was all thrown out when the Trump second term started. Either to curry favour (Zuckerberg, probably) or just to create chaos for governments (Elon).
There is an explicit strategy from the US right wing to undermine centre ground politics in Europe. This comes directly from the Whitehouse via Vance and Trump.
I agree with you this is greatly exaggerated by the US right wing - along with much else about the UK.
However, there are serious issues with hate speech laws. They go a long way beyond preventing abuse - threatening behaviour and similar were illegal before hate speech laws were passed. What hate speech laws made illegal were things that were not illegal, bit views that were judged unpleasant. We also now have criminalisation of behaviour such as silent prayer, or offering help in the wrong place.
On top of that we have "non-crime hate incidents" where the police investigate and record people for doing things that are legal.
IMO it actually helps racist groups such as the BNP as they can hint to the worst of their supporters that they would like to say things that are more racist by the law prevents them, while at the same time not frightening off more moderate supporters by using extreme language.
Racists and xenophobes have a lot of gain from ambiguity. Not only not frightening off supporters from the ethnic majority by being too extreme, but also using bigotry between minorities. There are European immigrants who hate non-whites, there are Islamphobic Jews (a group the EDL works with), antisemitic Muslims and more.
> We also now have criminalisation of behaviour such as silent prayer, or offering help in the wrong place.
These are the kinds of examples that I keep seeing given as to why the law is bad. But nobody ever shares specific examples. Can you give specific examples of people being arrested, or even just warned, for "offering help in the wrong place"?
South Korea had ID-based web for two decades, everything you say is recorded and tied to your identity, forever. Please do educate yourself about the state of the political speech in the Korean part of the web.
In 2012, South Korean judges found the following to be unconstitutional [0], e.g. based on the person who complained about not being allowed to comment anonymously on YouTube and other sites (since Korean YouTube and other sites needed them to identify their real identity first):
1. Act to Promote Use of Communications Network and to Protect Information (as amended by Act No. 9119 of 13 June 2008)
2. Article 29 and Article 30, Paragraph 1 of the Enforcement Decree of the said Act (as amended by the Presidential Decree No 21278 of 28 January 2009)
Also, the Korean "Real Name" requirement was "rolled back", as reported at [1], which describes that "Article 44-5 of the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Data Protection, etc. (the 'ICN Act') was enacted in 2007... It required large-scale portal sites with more than 100,000 visitors on average a day to record the real name identities of visitors posting comments, usually via the poster's resident registration number (RRN).".
[0] "Constitutional Court of Korea, 2010 Heon Ma 47, 252 (consolidated), Re: Confirmation of unconstitutionality", https://www.opennetkorea.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Korean-real-name-law-decision-english.pdf
[1] "Korea Rolls Back ‘Real Name’ and ID Number Surveillance" (2012), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2187232
South Korea was under the Park dictatorship for a big chunk of its history. Most of Europe was under dictatorship of one kind or another within living memory. Seems some people can't lose that mentality.
OBVIOUSLY there is a difference between Russia and the UK, obviously Russia is worse. But saying "the only thing you can't do is call for violence against them" is a completely dishonest characterisation of the situation, when we've seen documented cases of police overreach and people being arrested for thought crimes.
Ok, there's some context missing from those summaries though, no? In the first case it's not just "arrested for praying" it's "arrested for being in an exclusion zone specifically designated to try and stop you harassing people undertaking a lawful activity". They would have been arrested regardless of activity, it's effectively a restraining order and describing it as "for praying" is nonsense.
In the second case, it was not about misgendering someone - they were accused of a campaign of persistent harassment, something which the Daily Mail fails to mention except as a minor aside near the end of the article (not untypical of the Mail, naturally).
The Linehan case was debatable, and the approach taken probably wrong in some forms by the police (as admitted) but they were not arrested for simply voicing an opinion, but for behaviour which was sufficiently threatening and/or assaulting for the police to believe that a crime may have been committed and thus warrant further action.
There are cases of overreach, that applies outside of the speech issue as well - and indeed for any country with a reasonably effective policing system, it's never perfect. But these cases are not the simple slam-dunk that people will try and paint them as.
> In the first case it's not just "arrested for praying" it's "arrested for being in an exclusion zone specifically designated to try and stop you harassing people undertaking a lawful activity". They would have been arrested regardless of activity, it's effectively a restraining order and describing it as "for praying" is nonsense.
I think part of the absurdity being pointed out is that "just standing there with your eyes closed and silently praying" is considered "harassment" at all. It just stretches the meaning of the word part the point where it seems meaningful.
Edit: I think this ultimately becomes a Sorites paradox. Obviously a whole mob of people gathered around an abortion clinic and silently praying while you're trying to enter is intimidating and should qualify as harassment, but one person doing that clearly is not. There is no point at which the number of people become "a mob" though.
> bviously a whole mob of people gathered around an abortion clinic and silently praying while you're trying to enter is intimidating and should qualify as harassment, but one person doing that clearly is not.
The case I know of all involve individuals.
Apart from silent prayer, a woman was arrested for holding up a sign saying that coercion was a crime and offering to talk to anyone who wanted to. Is that intimidating?
"Apart from silent prayer, a woman was arrested for holding up a sign saying that coercion was a crime and offering to talk to anyone who wanted to. Is that intimidating?"
Depends on the context. Body language etc. But the main context is probably they were gathering in a place where it is forbidden to gather. Not arrested for praying or holding up signs.
Precisely this - it's the being there that was forbidden, not the act of praying - I'm not aware of any modern case where such a thing has been proscribed (at a guess, I would have said the last time was probably around the era of Cromwell, without checking).
Being there was forbidden for a specific group of people because they had a track record of harassing behaviour, much like a restraining order will likely be granted if someone has a track record of abusive behaviour towards another person. The praying thing is always mentioned as it makes it sound like some astonishing intervention in personal religion, while in reality, it's a complete red herring designed to rile people of a pre-existing viewpoint.
> Ok, there's some context missing from those summaries though, no? In the first case it's not just "arrested for praying" it's "arrested for being in an exclusion zone specifically designated to try and stop you harassing people undertaking a lawful activity"
How is standing by the road side saying and doing nothing harassing someone? The law is clearly not intended to prevent harassment (which was already illegal). Its purpose is to prevent women from being offered alternatives to abortion (e.g. accommodation, financial help, awareness of avaiable help and benefits)
> The Linehan case was debatable, and the approach taken probably wrong in some forms by the police (as admitted) but they were not arrested for simply voicing an opinion
They? Lineham definitely identifies as "he" so you are deliberately misgendering him
> How is standing by the road side saying and doing nothing harassing someone?
If you're standing by an abortion clinic, and you're a prominent anti-abortion campaigner, who has been known to harass people in the past, it was considered that your presence there is, in and of itself, intimidating to people who wish to access a legal service without undue interference. The ruling is not intended to prevent any of the things you mention, there are still plenty of ways that organisations can make those things generally known if they wish to, just not a particular group of people directly outside a clinic where they have a history of illegal behaviour.
In terms of misgendering Linehan, singular they has been around since the 14th century at the latest, and many style guides are more than happy with the usage for an individual where either gender is unknown, or where gender is considered irrelevant to the case in point. In this case, I would say the latter applies, but I am happy to acknowledge that Linehan identifies as "he" - significantly happier than he is to afford others similar courtesy.
Saying they were "just in an exclusion zone" is kind of a self-justifying excuse. It’s the same logic you see in authoritarian countries, like when Russian police arrest people for holding blank signs because they’re technically standing in a prohibited area.
If the government can simply label certain places off-limits and turn ordinary, non-violent behaviour into a crime, then the rule of law stops being a protection and starts being a way to selectively shut people up.
First of all, this is not, in any meaningful sense "the government" - the UK has an independent judiciary interpreting laws defined by parliament, but this was not at the behest of government in any reasonable sense.
Secondly, this is not the blanket labelling of a place as "off-limits" - it's off-limits to a specific group of people who have prior examples of harassing people in that location. It's no different in concept to a restraining order. A restraining order does not make the relevant locations unavailable to everyone, only those to whom the order applies, and the bar for one being granted is not, generally, negligible.
There are genuinely concerning cases where the right to protest has been curtailed (or is trying to be) in the UK at the moment. Some of the laws proposed around restriction of protest are illiberal and overreaching. This is not one of those instances though.
> What you cannot do is calling for violence against them.
This is blatantly disingenuous. The Public Order Act 1986, Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 all criminalize "insulting" and "abusive" words, or any public display of literature that is "insulting" or "abusive" -- much more than calls for violence:
> A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if—
> (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.
British jurisprudence has consistently put the likelihood of racial hatred being stirred up to the whims of the presiding judge. If the unaccountable bureaucrat feels like your comments could likely stir up racial hatred to even a single one of your cousins, even if there was no evidence of any stirred, then you are guilty.
What exactly constitutes "abusive" or "insulting" is not only vague but applied solely to white Christians. Certainly a document that says polytheists should be murdered (Quran 9:5) or one that says Hebrews should "completely consume" all the people that they get control of "with no pity" (Deuteronomy 7:16) could be considered not only insulting and abusive, but outright threatening. But these statutes are only used to attack people saying "I don't like how many foreigners are in my country and they should be rounded up and shipped back." Whatever your position on this kind of jingoistic nationalist sentiment, you should be able to recognize that the hypocrisy and lack of liberty is stupid and dangerous and is going to eventually result in genocide (either of the native Britons by the new arrivals, or the latter in the backlash).
Elizabeth Kinney certainly did not "call for violence" against the man who beat her. She simply, minutes after being physically beaten, used a slur in a private text message to a friend, and was arrested for it:
It is extremely suspect that every thread that Hacker News and other prominent and influential platforms has on these statutes gets flooded by people spreading deliberate pro-government misinformation, claiming that people are only being arrested for "calls for violence".
Threatening violence against parties is generally punished by a separate, far more severe statute (Serious Crime Act 2007, which replaced the traditional mechanism for incitement so that it could be vaguely applied to overeager online comments) that is virtually never invoked for Facebook posts, because none of elderly people arrested under this statute are threatening violence. They are posting something considered unacceptable by the powers that be, because limitless immigration was rammed down the throat of the English without any regard to democratic will or desires.
And the thing to stand out was the change of meaning when the full quote is provided:
____
Fear or provocation of violence.
(1)A person is guilty of an offence if he—
(a)uses towards another person threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or
(b)distributes or displays to another person any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,
with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him or another by any person, or to provoke the immediate use of unlawful violence by that person or another, or whereby that person is likely to believe that such violence will be used or it is likely that such violence will be provoked.
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If you have to rely on this kind of disingenuous trickery to make a point, then you don't have a point.
The GP is correct in their statement:
>> What you cannot do is calling for violence against them.
The statute says "or" and an a) b) c) bullet point listing in a statute also means "or". Maybe you are unfamiliar with boolean logic, but I was listing the relevant lines of the statute which allow someone who did not call for violence to be prosecuted, and the standard interpretation used by prosecutors to prosecute people for non-violent, non-threatening, insulting speech.
What about Elizabeth Kinney, arrested for a simple slur in a private text message to a friend about the man who assaulted her, minutes after being beaten? What about the tens of thousands of people arrested who did not threaten violence?
I was giving an example of the format. That you think that it is necessary for a c) to exist for the example to be valid belies your absurd lack of understanding of the subject matter, whether incidental or willful.
And that doesn't even matter, because the text of the a) part explicitly says or at the end:
> (a)he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
It clearly is not disingenuous nor deceptive to clip out a) when I highlighted the b) part explicitly showing that it was merely one bullet point, and that a) contains or at the end (meaning that you do not have to commit the behavior described in a to be guilty under the statute). I was being helpful, showing only the relevant parts of the statute for readers that don't want to waste their time. You responded by posting more legalese not relevant to the point, potentially maliciously to try to complicate and confuse readers.
"Admitted" in journalist speak means he pled guilty. It doesn't lend credence to the idea this idea:
> "with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him..."
There's no way to go from "they should not be allowed to live here" to the idea that he is making people subject to "immediate unlawful violence". I stand in awe that there is anyone that can argue that with a straight face. This thread is about whether the statute covers behavior that is violently threatening. Admitted spreading of "racial hatred" in the form of simple statements opposed to migrant presence is not violent or threatening. It is an inherently peaceful form of political lobbying.
The UK is extremely litigious in regards to libel. Her lying would be an act of public libel against the crown prosecutor. She went on TV to talk about it. It's been well covered in everything from the IB Times to The Sun to the Daily Mail (as linked above), as well as fully televised on Piers Morgan. Naturally the team you obviously root for can just refuse to cover any prosecutions which are embarrassing for them and you can simply smugly say "well it's not in any source I trust so it didn't happen."
At this point, assertions such as these are a form of ad hominem fallacy against half of society. You are discrediting the multitude of sources who have covered this story because of the nature of the speaker while no hardline liberal outlets have covered this story at all and presented a counterargument. If you want to have an alternative narrative, you need to link a major outlet showing her to be a liar. The case has been presented to the public. You don't like the people presenting the case. That doesn't invalidate the case. You must, at this point, present a member of your team making a reasonable, evidenced based deconstruction of her claims. The fact that there isn't any coverage from your side at all of this incredibly well televised and written embarrassment for the legitimacy of crown prosecutors speaks volumes.
Depends on what you mean by primarily. US government funding is still the largest single portion of their funding, but they are trying to diversify. Most funding comes from non-government sources: https://blog.torproject.org/financials-blog-post-2023-2024/
> almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech'
I only know about the UK, but this is not really true there.
Your speech has to be obviously threatening or abusive, and obviously motivated by prejudice towards one of a few categories (disability, race, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation are the main ones).
If you don't make threatening or abusive remarks towards these groups, you aren't breaking the law.
Well, no, more accurately, when it comes to it, it's in the eyes of a judge (or a jury in some cases). You can have all kinds of arguments about validity of arrests, of prosecutions, etc., but it's still fundamentally a system where you'll be charged with an offence and then either convicted or not.
I don't know of a single case (and don't believe anyone can point to one) where people have been arrested for simply criticising politicians. Has the number of incidents risen over recent years? Yes, and while this might be partly explained by stricter legal approaches, I suspect it's much more to do with a drastic rise in far-right activity and a consequent feeling among many that they can now say/do whatever they like with impunity (including making threatening and inflammatory remarks about minorities, and so on).
Not exactly a judge or jury. IIRC a common law assault can go on with only the subjective experience of threat. Hard to prove, but the bar is not objective. See:
True, although even those crimes (take common law assault) will still be heard in front of a magistrate - there's a process, there are processes for appealing, and it's not just some random police officer with the ability to jail you without process.
I agree that the UK has far too many laws that are more subjective than they ideally should be, but they do at least attach some level of observable and knowable process.
That would require the police to believe that an offence is likely to have been committed. While I am more than ready to criticise the police for many, many things, I'm not sure they're likely to just take that at face value... (As you've specified first contact, etc., that seems likely - of course there could be situations where such a communication would be an offence, such as in the context of a restraining/exclusion order, etc., but not in this case).
In the scenario which you've outlined, where you say "hello" to me, having never spoken to me before? No, I don't think that's an offence, but more to the point, whether I did or not, the police are unlikely to. We don't operate in a system where the police simply take the word of anyone who reports a feeling, the police have a duty to assess whether a crime has likely occurred.
What kind of evidence would you take? If it’s someone from the project openly saying what I imply, there obviously isn’t any. But if you are looking for evidence that the project took a politically biased turn to one side of the aisle, I’m sure you’ll find a lot on your own. And from there you can understand why there isn’t a single mention of what’s happening in the UK.
In this very thread you can find lots of comments excusing the censorship because it’s being used to censor the “wrong ideas”.
I would even accept hearsay as better than “you’ll find a lot on your own.”
I totally agree these comments contain discussion of controversial cases, but your claim is surprising to the point of being unbelievable without any kind of support.
To give the most optimistic take: Perhaps in your country, one political party is much more pro-censorship than another, so an anti-censorship stance seems aligned against that party? That’s believable; it happens in many countries (probably including mine; it can be hard to tell, since pro-censorship is a very common stance here).
