Staying ahead of censors in 2025(forum.torproject.org) |
Staying ahead of censors in 2025(forum.torproject.org) |
2017: ~5,500 arrests
2019: ~7,734 arrests
2023: ~12,183 arrests
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.
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?
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.
These numbers are for _all_ arrests under the Malicious Communications Act in that year. So while that category includes arrests for tweets, it also includes all arrests for any offensive communications via an internet-enabled device. So it'd include arrests for domestic abuse where at least one component of the abuse was through WhatsApp. Similarly, it can include just about any arrest where the crime was planned on an internet enabled device.
Cause if not a more than doubling is alarming regardless of how exactly the composition is sliced by online vs WhatsApp or whatever.
ETA:
> So it'd include arrests for domestic abuse where at least one component of the abuse was through WhatsApp.
Are you absolutely sure of this? It sounded good on the first read, but I’m very skeptical now. It seems to me that the arrest is going to be for battery, even if the charges filed later include the WhatsApp messages.
Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms? It’s a direct attack on a democracy’s ability to form consensus. I don’t think we’ve found the right, effective way to deal with this problem yet, but I applaud any democratic country that tries sth in that area.
I also think Tor is great, just for the record.
And beyond that, you applaud any democratic country's efforts to reign in speech by arresting their own citizens in order to combat foreign influence operations?
And the fulcrum of this argument is that we believe that Russia and China have uniquely pernicious influence operations and there are no other state-level actors domestically or semi-domestically whose intelligence services also exert influence through the passage of laws restricting speech?
Having seen the last two years of politics in the UK and the US, your impression is that there is an overwhelming Chinese-Russian troll farm operation which self-evidently justifies rolling back the last two centuries worth of hard-fought and incremental precedents won for free speech and free press.
And again, the water-line we need to stay above is merely "this is still better than being arrested in Russia or Iran", keeping in mind that many countries we would not consider to be democracies at all also meet this bar.
For Iran and Russia, it is what Khamenei and Putin don't want to hear,
in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.
Splitting democratic nations through fearmongering targeted at everyone's online profile is an incredible weapon.
I agree, 100%. Donald Trump should have the power to jail people for things they say online.
> Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms?
Non-sequitur. The existence of troll farms doesn’t mean it's such a big problem that we should give up our rights surrounding speech and communication that we fought hard for.
Others have pointed at the funding of TOR through the US. If there is actual evidence that this impacts the stated purpose of TOR (non-discriminating access to the internet, I‘d say), please share. Otherwise, my impression is still that TOR works as advertised and is working on solutions where it is not.
[1]: https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/15/britains-police...
I suspect the actual number of un-asked-for dick picks sent each year is significantly (multiple orders of magnitude) higher than that, while also suspecting that most of those pics don't lead to arrests and what people are arrested for is in fact hate speech or threats that at first glance seem like they might be terrorist in nature, but so far as I can tell this distinction is not actually recorded in any official statistics so we just don't know.
* I left the UK in 2018 due to the overreach and incompetence shown in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, plus the people in charge during Brexit all hating on international human rights obligations; I would've left a year sooner but for family stuff.
Should we be worried that the government doesn't even bother to track how many people are arrested/jailed/convicted of non-true-threat/sexual harassment speech?
Well surely then one of the many NGOs fighting tyranny is trying to keep track of the numbers, right?
The British arrest stats subsume DV harassment cases, and the original Times reporting quoted a police officer stating that they are the bulk of these numbers. I haven’t found an apples-to-apples comparison in the US, but the FL number gives a point of reference.
Take the use of taxes in fraud to buy votes en mass in michigan by the almost vice president. Or keir starmer just ignoring crimes comitted by his voting clientele. Its soviet block level bad out there.
There's similar phenomenon in safety stats. In the stats Istanbul appears to be vastly safer than London but having lived in both, I can tell you why Istanbul is safer: Because public spaces don't exist and private spaces are guarded with bars and steel doors.
In London, there's pubs etc. everywhere, in Istanbul you are limited to few centers to be outside after 10. The places where people go are bustling because they serve a city of 16 million, so they are well lit and guarded.
In London, there are parks and guard free public spaces everywhere. In istanbul there are very few such places.
In London people mostly live in homes that don't have bars on the windows but in Istanbul there's bars on the first floor on every window on any building that's not a gated community. People with money live in gated communities or one of the very few upscale district.
In London you can walk ro everywhere, it has wide sidewalks and not many hills. In Istanbul sidewalks are tiny and often interrupted and the city has hills, as a result very few people walk more than a few hundred meters and people with bicycles are rounding error level non existent.
In Istanbul there's simply not many opportunities for crime, so when it happens it happens differently that the way it happens in London. No one ill grab your phone and run but if you wander in a non-commercial location or location that is not well lit after dark, you can be raped or stabbed just like that.
You can't really compare the realities of these cities by simply looking at some numbers without proper context.
Why did this happen ? What changed ?
If they don't like a comment you make, or if your face isn't sufficiently supportive in a picture taken of you, or if you downvote the wrong post, all someone has to do is claim they are offended, and you can get taken to jail.
Oi! You gotta loicense for that smirk?
They're still in the civilized phase of this, with people being politely disturbed but still playing along with authority. I can't imagine this ends well, however - I think they're gonna get riots in Guy Fawkes masks, widespread mayhem, and murder before it's over.
This is the place where they force themselves into your home to check if you have a television, in some cases, right?
Details matter.
Media laws already penalize traditional media for lying about various subjects in most democracies (see libel laws, etc.). And it's good that they do. The alternative of unchecked lies spreading everywhere is worse.
Why should the internet be exempt from media laws?
The problem with dictatorships isn't that fake news is prohibited. It's that the people who decide what is fake news and what isn't have bad intentions and can't be challenged.
> No mention of "age verification"
> No mention of people arrested for Twitter posts in the UK and the EU
What did they mean by this?
Nobody blocks them in the UK and the EU so there is nothing to fight in technical terms for TOR Project.
They are not EU/UK political representative to fight legally or politically.
Does basically all network leaving China still get ratelimited at a few megabytes per second?
I get rate limited to around 10mbps in Chongqing. Was slightly higher in Beijing.
No as long as you pay CN2 GIA rate. Not ratelimited just oversubscribed and bad peering. Purchase the hundred dollar per mbps CN2 GIA dedicated bandwidth its no problem.
It seems to me that what you are allowed to say in the US is very dependent on how much the person you are saying it about is able to spend on lawyers, for instance.
I'd be curious to know if these are smaller, sympathetic ISPs or if they managed to partner with larger backbone providers. I'm interested to hear more about this.
[1] look up tapdance
At least in Russia, they don't really care about collateral damage. Currently, without a VPN, I can't open like 30-50% links on Hacker News (mostly collateral damage after they banned large portions of IPs)
This year they've blocked almost all of the VPNs and additionally calls in all messenger apps and FaceTime. The only thing that works is Outline - but one has to set up the server somehow, and if you're in Russia without a western credit card it might be difficult to do. For some reason the iOS app for Outline is still in the Russian App Store.
The only successful revolutions are piloted by a small elite with further interests that may not coincide with the people.
Every fascist regime that has ever existed has been ousted by war, revolution, or the vote. There are no fascist regimes left, unless you expand the definition of the term to mean “any authoritarian regime,” in which case there are plenty of historical examples of popular revolt.
> The only successful revolutions are piloted by a small elite with further interests that may not coincide with the people.
This isn’t true.
"SNI imitation" and "non-WebPKI certificate support" sounds like it could be useful for purposes other than evading censorship in any particular country
Discerning web users around the globe might also be interesting evading data collection, surveillance and ads by so-called "tech" companies, for example
https://blog.torproject.org/introducing-webtunnel-evading-ce...
- Does Tor need an OFAC license to supply to Russian and Iranian (and other sanctioned entities)? What's your approach to stay compliant and globally helpful? I know 50% of your funding comes from US government (or did a few years back, still?), does this give you extra pathways to engage those regions?
I'm wondering because the system would seem to fall under ITAR due to its encryption, and even if non-ITAR is still a cyber product and these countries are heavily OFAC listed rn.
This is relevant for me right now as I was recetnyl contact by a significant entity in a sanctioned region with a massive deal for BrowserBox. Applying for an OFAC license to see if it's possible to serve them (but we have to make final determination on ethics/legal even if license is approved, I guess). My feeling is that broad sanctions don't hurt the things they are meant to but punish people in all countries from forming transnational links that might actually help to prevent conflicts and build relations however small. Idk, just my reflections after encountring this situation.
> product
OFAC regulates international trade. Isn't Tor's publication an act of pure speech, rather than commerce? They're not charging for it, and they aren't physically moving any goods across borders. How could Tor be subject to any restrictions here?
(not a lawyer, just someone who naively thought the Crypto Wars ended in the 90s)
The people talking about this never make the distinction.
Probably not acting in good faith.
I'm not sure about rate limited by few megabytes per second, as I had rate limits like few bytes per second, when I tried to use ssh as a proxy. Few megabytes per seconds sounds like a perfect connectivity to me.
OFAC applies to trade, like your "massive deal". OFAC's original authority comes from a law titled, literally "The Trading With the Enemy Act".
Tor publishes free software, asking nothing in return. That isn't trade. Neither are those evangelists who broadcast sermons on shortwave radio -- they certainly "serve" Iran in the sense that people in that country can hear their broadcasts.
"Cyber product" lolwut? I think you have been breathing too many beltway fumes.
(writing this message, I realized how hard it is not to write "product" for the thing graphene and tor make)
Right. It's having to profile yourself under the excuse of not letting kids use TikTok or PornHub.
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.
> 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.
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.
-----
* 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.
The overwhelming majority of people arrested under the communications act aren’t charged under it. They’re either released, or charged under a more serious offence.
The US has adopted policies based on that argument in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism and I think its generally agreed it was a bad thing.
They don't have to be foreign - domestic prohibited leafleting suffices: Samuel Melia: Far-right activist jailed after sticker campaign - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867
Freedom of speech is really, really important. And yes, we absolutely must defend it. But it bothers me that it is used as a complete killer argument when politicians try to talk about other problems.
Our societies are getting more and more polarized. We are being bullied by various actors, and whenever someone points it out someone else (often the perpetrator) is quick to hide behind the false argument of freedom of speech.
I personally really believe that we need to do something against that polarization. It’s an attack vector that’s very actively and very effectively being exploited by adversaries, foreign and domestic alime. It’s not a new thing, propaganda and misinformation is centuries old, but in the age of the internet the dynamics change, and we need to adapt.
This is a super complex problem. And there is a huge risk that people abuse it to implement surveillance they always wanted to have. But yes, my general position is that I think it’s good that proposals are being made, and because of that, I don’t want to see Starmer in the same bucket as Putin in this discussion. It’s also good that there are fights about which proposals are good and bad. But my overall feeling is that we ignored the problem for too long, and now we have to catch up. Otherwise, we’ll just get more and more polarized societies, and this really, really worries me.
It may at this point also be worth pointing out that the proposals really are very different.
- The UK went for a centralist proposal on age verification around porn, which can very easily turn into a surveillance tool. I think it’s a terrible solution.
- Australia opts for banning social media for minors. Doesn’t strike me as a big surveillance tool. Maybe extreme if you don’t share their view on the dangers of social media, but clearly a very different approach, and also a different problem they think they identified to the UK
- Germany goes for better parental controls, i.e. mandating manufacturers to make it really easy for parents to enable a walled garden for their kids. I like it because it’s still up to the parents whether to enable it or not, and no government surveillance is involved at all.
The cool thing of having different countries experiment with different approaches - not just solutions, but also assumptions on what problems would need fixing - is that you can run many experiments in parallel. The scientist in me is very happy about that.
If we’re lucky, one or two of these will over time come out as great solutions and get widely adopted.
Only way around that would be to get a breakdown of the specific details of the arrests. If sufficient details of those records are publicly available, I don't think anyone has actually categorised them into convenient headline figures as yet.
As I said, we just don't know the breakdown, so this could be anything from 0% to 100% of the arrests are things almost everyone agrees with, or (by necessity of those numbers) disagrees with.
It's started cropping up in almost any thread related to free speech or censorship, and comes directly from the mouth of right-wing darling Tommy Robinson [0].
[0] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tommy-robinson-uk-speech-cla...
and the UK people can’t write the comments.
It is scary how Trump has really taken over America. This war on European ideals is directly from Trump and Vance in the Whitehouse. Americans seem to be loving it.
Kind of a best case, worst case scenario thing such that I can switch between as necessary. WireGuard best case, Xray-core fallback, syncthing worst case
Could be that some guy threatened to kill someone over FB, someone saw that, and reported it.
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).
https://sentencingcouncil.org.uk/resources/common-offences/a...
That is by no means the only crime that is committed subjectively.
It’s all about who considers what a bad look.
My hunch is because they have a backdoor in it.
they pwn the baseband of your phone.
Since…yknow, before 2013.
Signal is centralized, hosted on AWS, and through a mixture of legal procedures codified by US law and their bundled gag orders (PR/TT order, SCA warrant, FISA 702, and usage of NSLs) that can be extended for significant lengths of time and, occasionally, in de facto perpetuity, all metadata (who is talking to who, when, from where) can be monitored in real-time without Signal ever being informed. Combined with existing legal procedures for telecoms and VOIP providers for real-time + retrospective location tracking by phone number/associated IMEI/IP address by way of tower connectivity (this framework is required by law [specifically, CALEA] to be implemented by default for all users, not after the fact nor on-request), that's enough data to escalate to standard law enforcement procedures if an incriminating link is found, whereby the phone's internal message history can be dumped either through private (ex.: Cellebrite) or functionally coercive legal means (refusing to decrypt data can get you jail time if you are the subject of an investigation, and deletion of data such as via duress pins etc can get you a destruction of evidence charge), at which point all of your messages can be dumped.
And this all ignores the fact that firmware for basebands and cryptoprocessors (and most other hardware components in all devices) is closed-source, proprietary code, and that Signal piggybacks off of device encryption for at-rest message data instead of reimplementing it in userland. (This feature used to exist and was removed, but can be re-added through the Molly fork.)
I've also known protesters who have also had Signal geoblocked at the site of a protest the moment it was slated to start, forcing members of said protest to fall back to unencrypted methods at crucial times. Being centralized and using US-based cloud infra does a lot to compromise anonymity and security, even if message content isn't immediately readable.
Luckily, Signal is not vulnerable to push notification interception, but if you want a great real-world example of how gag-ordered dragnet metadata surveillance visible to both domestic and foreign governments (by way of international intelligence agreements) can look for massive corporations rendered helpless by this legal framework, that's a great case study to look into. https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments...
Throwing out the accusation of apps being "backdoored" just obscures the real, de facto "backdoors" that are US law.
It's so serious, that you should really back it up with some evidence or at least some foundation. Got any?
In this very thread you can find lots of comments excusing the censorship because it’s being used to censor the “wrong ideas”.
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).
Or hearsay. Or quotes from tinfoilhats or conspiracy nuts even.
Without any of these, you are seriously discrediting people and projects. And without any of these, there's no way for me counter any. Or even authorize any (ie a random russian troll, vs a journalist with reputation to lose)
America bans Harry Potter, in the past The U.K. banned Lady Chatterly, Germany bans nazi worship but America is quite happy with it.
Just because an american view on what is and isn’t acceptable exists doesn’t mean others have that same view.
Harry potter has never EVER been banned in the USA and to say that with a straight face means we are in completely different universes and further engagement is pointless.
Many groups may have lobbied a retailer or a local school or library to voluntarily remove it. Even just to avoid drama/pr. I personally vehemently disagree with this type of censorship... But it is absolutely not what we see in the UK. The US equivalent would be federal terrorism charges for having harry potter. Absurd.
American view is that private companies banning something or spying on someone is fine as long as it’s not the government doing it.
It comes down to the accountability. Europeans tend to believe in the ability to hold large organisation to account via the ballot box, Americans prefer the free market.
What we see in the U.K. is a view shared by most people that incitement to violence, glorifying terror etc is illegal. Americans are happy to have Musk or Zuck do the censorship instead, with them being able to use their wallets to hold them accountable.
You have the right to a trial. Defending yourself from a Federal felony charge only costs $250k+.
Given recent events, I think undermining civil liberties to expand executive powers is crazy.
edit: apologies for not getting your point, I actually think I'm in line. Being able to defend yourself in the US looks too expensive.
Yet The Netherlands is in third place for World Press Freedom Index. How is that even possible.
> "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it”
For additional context (which was relevant during the prosecution and sentencing) this was posted during a time of riots and arson attacks centred on asylum accommodations, and very shortly following a highly publicised mass-murder of children which was (entirely wrongly) being blamed on asylum seekers.
She also pleaded guilty to the charged offence, rather than contesting the charge, for clarity. While not all cases will be quite like this, it is definitely not the case that - as some parties of the right have claimed - she is a free-speech martyr, a political prisoner, and so on.
The mass-murder was a consequence of the asylum system. Given what is publicly known, parents of Axel Rudakubana were overwhelmingly likely to have been asylum seekers.
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.
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.
Historical examples, including just about within living memory, where freedom of speech was used to gain the power to kill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
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?
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.
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 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...
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.
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.
Your example seems like this as well.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve seen similar outrageous arrests for mean tweets in the UK.
Europe has lost its mind about right and wrong.
https://www.facebook.com/piersmorganuncensored/videos/elizab...
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.
https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/kriminalitaet/article2521783...
Until US circumcision rates are below 30% of male babies, the US has literally no moral high ground what-so-ever.
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=2187232How about calling a natal male a "he" - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arre...
Or perhaps: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/graham...
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.
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.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/III/crossh...
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:
https://www.facebook.com/piersmorganuncensored/videos/elizab...
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> This is blatantly disingenuous. The Public Order Act 1986 ... <snip>... criminalize "insulting" and "abusive" words ...
Do you know what i find disingenuous here, you hooked me with the words i quoted above so i went to the legislation:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64
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.
____
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.
You are incorrect in yours:
> This is blatantly disingenuous.
Grandparent is quoting Part III 18 Use of words or behaviour or display of written material.
You are quoting Part I 4 Fear or provocation of violence.
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?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c703e03w243o
Just like Elizabeth Kinney, this man did not threaten violence at all. He just said "they should not be allowed to live here."
My real point here is that this discussion specifically has been so thoroughly debated by brilliant people that I have trouble understanding why this hasn't been simply closed as proven like we do in math. Eventually you reach a level of argument where there is simply nothing left. We have reached it. Curtailing speech and thought simply never works as intended and always brings greater harms than the alternative.
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.
It has ever right to be worried and frankly seeing how much activist media and the west republished terrorist propaganda.. they are right.
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"?
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.
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.
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").
But we'd need to see statistical analysis across the whole population of arrests to see whether it's generally a deterrent or not.
But indeed, the rulings against the rapists don't seem allright and very much out of balance with the other sentence.
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).
[1]: https://www.mopo.de/hamburg/details-aus-dem-prozess-darum-ka... [2]: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/57113 [3]: https://www.mopo.de/hamburg/ehrloses-vergewaltigerschwein-20...
It can be, but free speech types like to pretend it's nigh impossible. The UK has had modern hate-speech laws (for want of a better term) since the Public Order Act 1986, which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred. Amendments in 2006 and 2008 expanded that to religious and homophobic hatred respectively. This exists in stark contrast to the common strawman touted by freeze peach types of "are you just going to compile a list of 'bad words'?!" Hate speech is not magic: you're not casting the self-incriminatus spell by saying the bad word.
That said, I wont pretend like that aren't misuses of police powers in regard to speech, and expression more generally. We've seen a crackdown on protests over the past few years which is more than a little frightening. That said, it's become a pattern that anytime I encounter a discussion online about the UK trampling on freedom of speech or whatever, it always comes back to hate speech. It's almost never about protest or expression. I think that's interesting.
EDIT: Correction, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 did not make stirring up or inciting "homophobic" hatred an offence, but rather hatred on the basis of sexual orientation. So one could get prosecuted for being inciting anti-straight hatred.
It's an issue because people are being investigated because people are offended by some things while others are not, and others (like comments here) see the difference between offensive speech and outright calls for violence. The police in some areas are encouraged to actively investigate reports of offensiveness whether or not they seem to them serious. It's a good idea on paper but the ambiguities and unequal application of their policy is newsworthy. It leads to conspiratorial and political theories.
There is also a related newsworthy issue of the widening of what hate speech means to encompass forms of offensiveness. So some may say it's a direct call to violence to say some things but others may say it's not. This ambiguity leads to an effect and discussions.
"Silence is violence" and "From the river to the sea" are topical example quotes used in this debate.
But I think the leap from acknowledging that to "speech should never be infringed", as many freeze peachers would advocate, to be infinitely more destructive: just see what it's doing to America. Just look at what the infiltration of American-style freedom of speech principles is doing to this country: we have people defending Lucy Connolly, the woman who publicly advocated for the burning down of hotels housing asylum seekers, calling her a "political prisoner", that the government is "silencing the right".
One part where I agree with you is "From the river to the sea": there are two versions of this (more than two, but they are variations of the same thing), the first being "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", and the other "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty". Guess which one our government finds objectionable. And guess which one is being used to justify a genocide. It does bother me that the government can chill and punish speech that objects to its foreign policy. But I feel as if (this is just vibes, feel free to correct me) the most harm being done is through anti-protest laws, not grossly offensive digital communications: I personally know of multiple people who regularly post abrasive, if not downright virulent "silence is violence" type content online, but do not go to protests because they fear arrest, detention, and being fired.
If you point out that one racial demographic is responsible for more crimes than another, would that run afoul of the statute?
If not, what if you additionally point out that the reason these crimes were committed is likely because that behaviour is normalized in their culture? This seems like it would definitely run afoul of the statute, and if this logical deduction were valid, then this sort of criticism would be suppressed despite being legitimate, and could be weaponized against people.
I'm frankly not so convinced that it's possible to define hate speech in a way that does not allow for these failure modes.
Do you not think that trying to malign your opposition by putting a comical misspelling in their mouths is a bit infantile as a rhetorical tactic? The same thing being done to you would look something like an insinuation that what is being banned is "hurting someone's widdle fee-fees"; surely the discussion here would not benefit if everyone stooped down to that level.
Oh we were already at that level by that time: the comment mine responds to makes the claim that "it is really difficult to define what hate speech is" (untrue); that "more often than not it's used as a cudgel to silence the opposition" (unsubstantiated); and claims that the UK government's intentions match that of Iran and Russia (untrue).
For some reason, so many people seem to tolerate outright disinformation but draw the line at mild childishness. It's bewildering.
heh.
Why are they doing this, in what context?
Edit: from reading the thread I think this is about the war against Hamas and the dire situation on the West bank.
Samuel Melia was jailed 2 years for publishing downloadable stickers saying "Mass immigration is white genocide," "Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back," and "Labour loves Muslim rpe gangs".
Are those messages controversial? For sure. Should originator of these messages be prosecuted? I don't think so. Are anti-christian, "dead men don't rpe" or "eat the rich" messages treated the same in uk? Absolutely not.
> Norwood, a member of an extreme right-wing political party [the British National Party], placed a poster on his apartment window that called for the removal of all Muslims from Britain.
> the poster in question contained a photograph of the Twin Towers in flame, the words “Islam out of Britain – Protect the British People” and a symbol of a crescent and star in a prohibition sign. The assessment made by the domestic courts was that the words and the images amounted to an attack on all Muslims in the UK. The ECtHR largely agreed with the assessment, and stated that such a general, vehement attack against a religious group, implying the group as a whole was guilty of a grave act of terrorism, is incompatible with the values proclaimed and guaranteed by the Convention, notably tolerance, social peace and non-discrimination
https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/norwood...
Re Melia:
> Melia was the head of the Telegram Messenger group Hundred Handers, a social media channel that generated racist and anti-immigration stickers that were printed off and displayed in public places.
> The stickers contained "ethnic slurs" about minority communities which displayed a "deep-seated antipathy to those groups", the court heard.
> The judge told Melia: "I am quite sure that your mindset is that of a racist and a white supremacist.
> "You hold Nazi sympathies and you are an antisemite."
> Melia, who was also found guilty of encouraging racially-aggravated criminal damage, was sentenced to two years for each charge to run concurrently.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867
Interesting that the cases that spring to mind for you are literal neo-Nazis.
For the UK, it's not even clear what Starmer doesn't want to hear, he's got the charisma of the 10th-worst-in-class GCSE-level presentation on a topic not of his own choice. This can be observed in the poll ratings which are both amusing and the kind of thing that should only be found in a farce and not reality.
I'd instead point to Musk, who has openly said that "cis" is "hate speech" on Twitter now he owns the site. Starmer may or may not have such examples, but it's just too hard to figure out what they even are 'cause he lacks presence even as PM with all the cameras pointed at him.
* And to English speakers, "the Berlin Wall"
Do you have any evidence for that claim or is it a gut feeling?
> in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.
In a literal sense that can't be true, since upon change of government, the hate speech definition does not suddenly change. In contrast, Putin and Khamenei are very literally able to personally define the definition.
In a figurative sense, that's likely true. As a democratically elected representative of the people, what he wants censored reflects what the people want censored, so is in alignment with a democratic society. If the people change their mind or realize it's not actually what they wanted, they elect somebody else next time. Good luck trying that with Putin or Khamenei.
In either case, your comparison does not hold up.
Again, try that with Putin or Khamenei. (If such an article even gets published instead of ending the career or life of the journalist.)
Well it might if people systematically vote for politicians who promise to change the hate speech definition.
And I disagree, free speech is a liberal value, you don't get to say nazi shit and hide behind free speech. Being a groyper is not a crime, but calling for genocide is and should be punished. Else we run the risk of normalizing these abhorrent ideas and repeating the worst times of our history, like the US seems on a course to doing.
Putin and Khamenei are ruthless, brutal dictators. You don’t need to like Starmer, but he’s none of that. He’s a proper democrat. The implication that they’re all somewhat the same delegitimises democracies and legitimises these dictators. That’s how they win.
I personally don’t think UK’s age verification thing is a good idea. I like Germany‘s idea of mandating PC and smartphone manufacturers to put simple parental controls in thar parents, not the central government, can enable for their kids.
I love Australia‘s banning of Social media for kids. Let’s see where that leads. I don’t live there but am very excited for rhe outcome of that experiment.
We can’t just sit here and simplify everything to black and white while Russian troll farms polarise our societies. We bear some responsibility here to have a nuanced debate about these things.
There is no c) bullet point, the part you misinterpreted as an or is an AND:
"with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him..."
>> A plasterer who admitted to stirring up racial hatred...
Admitted?
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
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/III/crossh...
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
The same Starmer who's cancelled local elections? Who's not looked at the polls and thought maybe it's time to go, because the demos clearly don't want me? The same Starmer who said no rise in NI in the manifesto, only to increase NI? The same Starmer who raised the threshold of votes required for an MP from within the Labour party to challenge his leadership?
He's no proper democrat. People are already talking about the rhetoric being used around war with Russia as laying the foundations for removing a 2029 general election.
False: https://fullfact.org/online/council-elections-war-cancelled/
> Who's not looked at the polls and thought maybe it's time to go, because the demos clearly don't want me?
You seem to have missed the "did actually win power" and "this is how democracy works in the UK" parts.
I agree he should go, but I could say that about all of the UK politicians, they're all negative approval: https://www.pollcheck.co.uk/favourability-ratings
> The same Starmer who raised the threshold of votes required for an MP from within the Labour party to challenge his leadership?
From 10% of the MPs to 20% of the MPs. As challengers would have to, you know, get more MPs than him to win, the only thing going from 10% to 20% is to have less pointless drama.
> People are already talking about the rhetoric being used around war with Russia as laying the foundations for removing a 2029 general election.
First I've heard of that. Would be exceptionally dumb for a UK politician to do on purpose for the same reason that it would be correct to cancel elections in the event of such a war: the UK is not even remotely close to being ready to battle Russia. UK armed forces are just about big enough to keep the nuclear weapons safe, not much more besides that.
Talking about ruthless dictators and true democrats in the same post.
Someone who is a citizen of the UK who has no connection to Iran or Russia is legitimately much more concerned with the ways in which Starmer governs the UK, than in whether Putin or Khamenei "win". I don't even disagree with you that Putin and Khamenei are ruthless dictators, and certainly plenty of people in Russia or Iran or countries in the Russian or Iranians sphere of influence have plenty of good reasons to politically oppose both those dictators. But a democratically-elected official can wield the power of the state against you and harm your interests just as much as a dictator can, and people in the UK who oppose Starmer and his party shouldn't let up in that opposition just because it makes Starmer seem closer to Putin or Khamenei than Starmer's supporters would like.
Really? Can they? Because in a functioning democracy you generally have recourse to courts, tertiary adjudication of various forms, a (relatively) free press that you can try and interest in taking up your story, etc. In a brutal dictatorship you're likely to have none of those, and to go missing in the night if you try and suggest that you should.
It's absolutely right to oppose politicians you disagree with - that's what political engagement is all about! But beyond a certain level, hyperbole (and the general sense of "they're all the same") simply does serve to undermine not just democracy, but any rationale for political engagement vs. simple rioting.
Cancelling elections and mass arrests of people protesting against genocide is your idea of a "proper democrat"?
Unless the statute specifically makes that distinction, then that's not very compelling. There are already laws against inciting violence. Hate speech laws are specifically understood to be about outlawing speech that contain or incite "hate", whose definition is typically broad.
"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."
We don't have SWAT teams in the UK. She'd have been sent a letter telling her to appear in court on a certain date.
If you feel the need to lie continually, you shouldn't really consider yourself a Christian.
Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15302729/Assault-vi...
The Sun: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/37356128/mum-convicted-hate-cr...
MSN: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/crime/general/terrified-and-naked-...
Inkl: https://www.inkl.com/news/terrified-and-naked-mum-of-four-ar...
Revolver News: https://revolver.news/2025/12/uk-mother-arrested-faced-10-ye...
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-lies-claims-spark-fury-public...
This is an incredibly stupid take, and I would vote for a legislation to penalise incredibly stupid ones before gratuitously abhorrent, and more harshly so. It would be gloriously wonderful, too.
If I had a penny for every time this happened....
Free speech is repugnant speech. But I can make the case for far-leftists supporting Palestine action as well.
I am interested in the letter of the law, because that's what matters, not how it's being applied while the winds are blowing in a particular direction.
As to the general question, no, a statement being true does not immunise it from an accusation of it being used to stir up or incite hatred, or at the very least such a defence is not defined within the Public Order Act 1986. We do have the Human Rights Act which protects Freedom of Expression, but whether you could use it or other defences is pure speculation on my part: I would need to see some actual caselaw.
I've attempted my own searches but have only encountered the usual suspects: holocaust deniers and their ilk. Please let me know if you find such a case because I genuinely think that would be interesting to debate, but debating over pure speculation and innuendo is very boring.
To be clear, I haven't even looked, but being a recent topic of debate, it seems important to clearly establish the letter of the law.
> Why is this not just concern trolling?
Because the law-as-written is what matters, like I said, not the law-as-it-has-been-exercised-so-far. Unless you think people inclined to abuse the law will never be elected.
> I've attempted my own searches but have only encountered the usual suspects: holocaust deniers and their ilk
Depending on the specifics, that already seems problematic. There are also chilling effects that are not clearly visible until after the fact. How long have some people wanted to discuss the over representation of some ethnicities in sexual assault clusters, but couldn't because of these laws?
Often, it seems like this concept of "disinformation" you invoke just serves as a way people give themselves moral license to suspend normal rules of debate conduct in the face of disagreement. Being charitable to your opponents and having to engage with their claims is tiring and difficult, and sometimes they even come better prepared - how much easier if you can just frame dissent as dangerous enemy action and shut it down.
> jet fuel/steel beams
This debate was carried out sufficiently publicly that I got the sense people actually ran experiments confirming the pro-beam softening/structural failure/whatever case; certainly the "truther" case should have been taken seriously before that, and with decorum always because there is no situation in which any debate in a moderatable forum benefits from playground behaviour.
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.
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?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdd5p5gyvveo
Starmer doesn't just have negative approval ratings. His are through the floor. The last voting intention poll from YouGov (which has been relatively favourable for Labour) would have given them just 69 seats - fewer than the Lib Dems currently have.
1. "Postponed" is not "cancelled"
2. "Postponed" is entirely normal within British politics. For most of my life, even the timing of general elections were at the whim of the government.
3. Given how Starmer polls, the delay is almost certainly going to make things un-favourable for him. Also unfavourable for Labour, unless they kick him out first.
Not that it would matter much if your conspiracy theory held water, given that one of the many constitutional problems the UK has is that local councils have negligible power (options are tied all over the place) and therefore local elections are functionally little more than opinion polls done in a voting booth.
Why? I don't have a threshold at 127 in my luminance channel.
Just a reminder - what children are allowed or not is not any government's business, it's parents' one. Which requires tearing their asses off from sofas and their eyes from screens and actually talk to their children and be in the know of their circles and activities.
Nothing you've said contradicts that you think the government should not forbid children from buying alcohol.
Social media appears to be more harmful to a child than low quantities of alcohol, but less harmful than lung cancer.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I don't know, perhaps you should give some examples of this actually happening rather than relying solely on implication.
What the article does mention is that local officials and other agencies were "wary of identifying ethnic origins for fear of upsetting community cohesion, or being seen as racist", which is mere cowardice. In fact, I am somewhat surprised you are not using this to argue that government officials are too scared of free speech to do their job: that the implied threat of some people using their free speech to call the local government racist is enough to paralyse its function.
No, to me, what this article shows is how unfettered speech actually functions: a foreign billionaire with the loudest megaphone in history is dredging up a decade-old stain in our country's criminal history to aid and abet our domestic right and far-right political parties. And I think the fact that those parties immediately jumped on this in the media shows that it's very much not something that'll get you thrown in the gulag for discussing.
I literally agreed with you in my original post (i.e. before you replied to me, unless you're both accounts) that he's not popular.
With a graph.
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."
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Business_Times
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.
Timmy: "I think it should be legal to kill Jews."
Moderator: (bans Timmy)
Timmy (elsewhere): "Help, I'm being persecuted for expressing my beliefs!" / "Moderator X is a fascist oppressing people based on their opinions!" / "Platform X hates free speech!"
XKCD covered this phenomenon years ago, but wasn't heeded: https://xkcd.com/1357/
You can see it even in the comments on this post about the UK. Most complaints about UK censorship don't say what was being censored. If Timmy said why the moderators banned him, his argument wouldn't even survive a cursory glance.
That would be "eat the rich"? It looks like more demand for homicide and cannibalism, at least at a face value.
> free speech is a liberal value
That is a really nice definition that allows your side to say whatever they want, but the other side to have their speech restricted. It looks like "free speech" because you say it is, but of course it is not.
> but calling for genocide is and should be punished
And that is the usual strawman. "Calling for genocide" is incredibly vague. Is repatriation of immigrants genocide? Is CECOT genocide? Is advocating bombing Gaza genocide? Is "from the river to the sea" a coded call for genocide? Is, God help us, saying that trans women are men advocating for "trans genocide"? (apparently that's a thing)
I have this feeling you don't want to establish a line in the sand for free speech to be free - you just want to pick and choose the examples that you deem acceptable.
Very bad faith interpretation. You know full well that's not what is meant when this phrase is employed.
> That is a really nice definition that allows your side to say whatever they want, but the other side to have their speech restricted. It looks like "free speech" because you say it is, but of course it is not.
Free speech is a liberal value. Don't take liberal as meaning "american left", take it as meaning pro-freedom. Nazis famously don't believe in it. The Trump administration only believes in it when they're making themselves to be the victims of supposedly unfair censorship, but then use the full power of the state to silence media, or individuals.
Should we extend free speech to groups actively trying to suppress it? That's the paradox of intolerance: "if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance". Example of this to be found in the US.
> And that is the usual strawman. "Calling for genocide" is incredibly vague. Is repatriation of immigrants genocide? Is CECOT genocide? Is advocating bombing Gaza genocide? Is "from the river to the sea" a coded call for genocide? Is, God help us, saying that trans women are men advocating for "trans genocide"? (apparently that's a thing)
You're completely muddying the waters, you know what is a genocide. And throwing in a line about trans people for some reasons, because your side is literally obsessed with making their lives as miserable as possible.
You're pretending that the line can only be arbitrary, when every jurisdiction already has one. Look at that, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_France
Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
I hope you're willing to extend this charitable way of interpreting intentions to the hyperboles made by the far right in their slogans. What if a anti-immigration group came out with the "eat the aliens" slogan? Should they be allowed to chant that? Make signs?
> Should we extend free speech to groups actively trying to suppress it
Again, it cuts two ways. Should we extend free speech to groups trying to suppress public discourse by deplatformimg, cancelling and banning people they don't like from speaking in campuses?
> You're completely muddying the waters, you know what is a genocide. And throwing in a line about trans people for some reasons
I only mentioned trans people because not believing their self appointed sexual identity was famously equated to erasing and genociding them. As you see, the waters are indeed very muddy. You see them clear just because you already made up your mind about what kind of speech you want to allow and what kind of speech you want to ruthlessly ban.
Consider the counterfactual: if hate speech laws were not in place, would the probability of a whistleblower in the police, or a journalist picking up the story from one of the victims go up or down?
> What the article does mention is that local officials and other agencies were "wary of identifying ethnic origins for fear of upsetting community cohesion, or being seen as racist", which is mere cowardice.
Yes, not openly resisting improper application of hate speech laws (or any law) is always cowardice, but cowardice is common, and that's exactly what all unscrupulous officials bank on. Most people respond to even subtle incentives, like implications of racism, and hate speech classifications are even less subtle.
Hate speech laws don't have to involve a gulag to have chilling effects and cause real harm, as this case shows quite well I think. That the possibility of being called racist was even remotely effective as a threat is a downstream effect of accepting the legitimacy of hate speech laws IMO.
> And I think the fact that those parties immediately jumped on this in the media shows that it's very much not something that'll get you thrown in the gulag for discussing.
It's hard to be censorious once something has achieved enough public exposure.
In any case, this all seems to be somewhat besides the point, because how a law is applied in practice is less compelling than how broadly it can be interpreted by future officials who may be less compassionate or scrupulous. As I've been saying all along: what does the letter of the law say?
You keep saying that I shouldn't rely on implication, but the law is all about implication. What could possibly matter more than the implications of how the law is written?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBT_Media
IBT Media was owned by the parent company of Newsweek for 5 years 2013-2018.
It is now owned by followers of this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jang
So... Yeah.
I guess the French Revolution was a good example of murdering the rich tbf.