> If the boundaries of a tolerant society are clearly defined Our system of common law already does that. As I noted in response to another poster downthread,

> If the boundaries of a tolerant society are clearly defined Our system of common law already does that. As I noted in response to another poster downthread, assault is already a crime, and shouting abuse at a particular person is assault if that person can reasonably believe that they are in danger of actual harm from the shouter. But that is not what the person who was arrested in the subject article was doing. He was not threatening, or even talking to, any particular person. > people that might be in iminent danger, today, from groups like neo-nazis, racists or anti-lgbtq+ Whatever "imminent danger" exists is not from tweets. And conflating a tweet with the kind of "imminent danger" that actually harms people is exactly the kind of muddying of the "boundaries of a tolerant society" that makes the problem worse, not better. > What about persecution? The man who got arrested in the subject article was not persecuting anybody. > Government individuals can and have abused power, but I think those are two different issues, one being the scope of government action and the second power misuse and mismanagement. Expanding the scope of government power also expands the scope of possible misuse and mismanagement. So the two are connected. > Isn't there a slight possibility they might have some form os substance to their claims? Saying that you are offended by someone's tweet is one thing; of course you can and should say that. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm advocating for--combating offensive speech with more speech. But calling the police because you are offended by someone's tweet is very different. Now you're not fighting speech with more speech; you're fighting speech with persecution. Which is exactly the sort of thing you claim to be against. > we are not talking about isolated incidents but actions that can be taken by society as a whole. Um, what? The tweet that got this man arrested was an isolated incident. He's not "society as a whole". He's just one person who tweeted something. In fact, what "society as a whole" does, on your preferred model, is far more like persecution and "imminent danger" than what this man did. The guy tweets something you find offensive, so you bring down the massive power of the government on him? For a tweet? Where is your sense of proportion? Why can't you just say "that was offensive" and leave it at that, and save the massive power of the government for the cases where there is actual harm? Wasting all that power on a guy that just tweets something makes it harder to focus that power on the cases where people actually are harmed, which is where you say it needs to be used.