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For those unaware, the UK police are currently promising to go after people posting misinformation and retweeting content (including video of riots) that might

• anakaine 2y ago
  What's amusing is you posted a link to the 5t year old woman being arrested, and that's also an endpoint which is blocking foreign access.
• Hedder 2y ago
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• adolph 2y ago
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• benmmurphy 2y ago
  the wild thing is in the UK private citizens can bring about criminal prosecutions. section 179 is a hornets nest waiting to be poked. in the UK prosecutors are not a bulwark against bad law. the courts would need to thread the needle to protect freedom of speech for elites but allow suppression for plebs. > at the time of sending it, the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience, and even announcing future legitimate policy direction by the government could be construed as causing non-trivial psychological harm.
  • ethbr1 2y ago
    As an American, watching the UK government wrestle with "free speech, except when we disagree with it" is a fun pastime. It's definitely not a right if it disappears when it's inconvenient.
    • krapp 2y ago
      Speech is regulated in the US as well. Publicly call for the assassination of a President and see what happens.
      • ethbr1 2y ago
        The exceptions are far more narrow than in the UK. Try and bring a libel charge in each country. PS: And technically, afaik, it isn't a crime to call for the assassination of the president of the US. It's illegal to attempt it, and to take actions that support those attempting it. But if you just post on Facebook about it... you'll get a call from the Secret Service and a recommendation that you don't do that, but no charge.
        • krapp 2y ago
          Nevertheless, mocking the UK for having "free speech, except when we disagree with it" is kind of specious when that exactly describes free speech in the US as well. It's simply a matter of where different countries choose to draw the lines.
          • ethbr1 2y ago
            If you're making the absolutist argument, then yes, you are correct. If you're making a practical argument, then we can trade exclusions 1-for-1 in the US vs UK, and the UK list will go on far after you've exhausted the US ones.
        • fragmede 2y ago
          Post a copy of Pixar's latest movie online and see if that speech is protected. Or CSAM. It would be better to acknowledge that there very much are limits on the freedom of speech, just like everywhere else, instead of pretending we're better than everyone else and that we don't have any censors.
• deleted 2y ago
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• 486sx33 2y ago
  I hereby assert that the queen is still alive . Am I now guilty of an offense?
  • krapp 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • ethbr1 2y ago
    Depends. How do you feel about her?
  • dave333 2y ago
    There's a difference between freedom of speech and inciting riots with lies. Also what can get by in normal times may not do so in an emergency.
    • anal_reactor 2y ago
      > There's a difference between freedom of speech and inciting riots with lies The latter was exactly the excuse that communist regimes used to silence any criticism
• blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
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  • ethbr1 2y ago
    George Orwell was not not British.
    • etothepii 2y ago
      Errrr, what? He might have been born in India but I don't think we can claim he wasn't British.
  • 8af8tasfr652s 2y ago
    [dead]
• BoredPositron 2y ago
  >> I'm currently waiting for a knock at my door along with 65 million of Brits who have posted inaccurate information online from time to time. Legal note: if anything I have said here is inaccurate I was unaware of it at the time of posting. how fucking funny. Everytime when something like this is getting discussed the only response is sarcasm and hybris. No acknowledgment of the problem, no ideas, just fucking bad one liners. It's a real problem and you can be glad that you haven't had to deal with it. Yeah, ofc what they are doing now is absolute shite but sometimes you could at least acknowledge the law in it's meaning and not the shitty execution of it and no I don't care about your sarcasm "disclaimer" you are not five.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • etothepii 2y ago
    What do you want people to do?
    • BoredPositron 2y ago
      Be serious?
      • whatshisface 2y ago
        Totalitarian regimes don't win when the majority believes the general line. That never happens. Totalitarian regimes win when the people give in to despair. That's why people use the one-liners. They are coping.
        • BoredPositron 2y ago
          I saw your deleted comment and I am not gonna engage with you because of it.
          • whatshisface 2y ago
• RIMR 2y ago
  >But heated up again today after a 55 year old women was arrested for posting inaccurate information to social media, https://www.cheshire.police.uk/news/cheshire/news/articles/2024/8/woman-arrested-in-connection-with-inaccurate-social-media-post/ https://www.cheshire.police.uk/news/cheshire/news/articles/2... I cannot visit that link, lol. IP blocked.
• gorgoiler 2y ago
  For completeness, the context here is a social media post alleging the identity of someone arrested hours earlier for a mass murder at a children’s play group — an extremely distressing event that has been followed, for unclear reasons, by nationwide rioting. This person was “arrested in relation to a post about the identity of the attacker in the Southport murders” and specifically “on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred”. Most police forces / services / departments no doubt mis-use the law for vexatious arrests but this does not seem like one of those cases. I do think it’s valid to question whether it’s moral for the Lilliputian Police to criminalise anti Big-Endian rhetoric. If everyone’s doing it it is hard to claim the nationwide rhetoric is responsible for specific violent crimes. If only a few people are doing it then there might be a causal link from their speech to the other crimes, and those links and subsequent crimes are a vital part of the debate.
  • lmaoguy 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • gorgoiler 2y ago
      I don’t think this is fair but I also shouldn’t have skirted around a bunch of things by just saying “unclear reasons”. To be more specific those accused of stoking up the mobs — characters like Robinson, Fox, Tate, Farage — have a prior agenda that is wider than this specific knife attack and it is suspected that the rioting, while ostensibly being in response to the knife attack, is really about airing old prejudices based on race, religion, and nationality (hence the Swift reference.)
  • whatshisface 2y ago
    I hope the police are ready for a decade where a single highly motivated person who is willing to risk punishment can instantly weild the credence of one half of the entire debate, and win the attention of everyone with hushed sympathies. This is an extremely dangerous political climate.
    • 2y ago
• sva_ 2y ago
  The situation here in Europe is gonna get a lot more tense over the next 10-20 years.
• zimpenfish 2y ago
  > a 55 year old women was arrested for posting inaccurate information to social media Well, it's not simply "posting inaccurate information", it's "publishing written material to stir up racial hatred" (which it clearly was) and "false communications" (technically true because her information was completely wrong.)
  • katzinsky 2y ago
    Regardless of the content, unless it's a death threat, I don't think going after old ladies is a great way to calm people down.
    • crtasm 2y ago
      Maybe look at it this way: they're going after people because of what they're posting, not their age or gender. also 55 isn't old! but I realise I may be closer to it than you are.