Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran<p>2017: ~5,500 arrests<p>2019: ~7,734 arrests<p>2023: ~12,183 arrests
I was also surprised the post focusses on Rus/Iran when Australia, UK, and many more countries (Malaysia, Thailand) have/are introducing laws to prevent large swaths of free speech (banning mediums by age, banning conversation by topic, or by making speaking one's mind online too risky, as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech').
"as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech'"<p>Are you serious here?<p>In russia you get problems for calling a war a war and worse problems if you say it is a bad war.<p>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?
In Germany you can receive a suspended sentence for raping a minor and then an actual jail sentence for insulting the rapist.<p>I’ve seen similar outrageous arrests for mean tweets in the UK.<p>Europe has lost its mind about right and wrong.
> What you cannot do is calling for violence against them.<p>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:<p>> 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—<p>> (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.<p><a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/III/crossheading/acts-intended-or-likely-to-stir-up-racial-hatred" rel="nofollow">https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/III/crossh...</a><p>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.<p>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).<p>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:<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/piersmorganuncensored/videos/elizabeth-kinney-the-mum-who-was-arrested-for-using-a-slur-word-in-private-text-/25218375061188976/" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/piersmorganuncensored/videos/elizab...</a><p>It is <i>extremely</i> 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".<p>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.
>> What you cannot do is calling for violence against them.<p>> This is blatantly disingenuous. The Public Order Act 1986 ... <snip>... criminalize "insulting" and "abusive" words ...<p>Do you know what i find disingenuous here, you hooked me with the words i quoted above so i went to the legislation:<p><a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64" rel="nofollow">https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64</a><p>And the thing to stand out was the change of meaning when the full quote is provided:<p>____<p>Fear or provocation of violence.
(1)A person is guilty of an offence if he—<p>(a)uses towards another person threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or<p>(b)distributes or displays to another person any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,<p>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.<p>____<p>If you have to rely on this kind of disingenuous trickery to make a point, then you don't have a point.<p>The GP is correct in their statement:<p>>> What you cannot do is calling for violence against them.<p>You are incorrect in yours:<p>> This is blatantly disingenuous.
You aren’t quoting the same statute the grandparent comment is referencing.<p>Grandparent is quoting Part III 18 Use of words or behaviour or display of written material.<p>You are quoting Part I 4 Fear or provocation of violence.
So you are asserting that the 12,000 arrests in England/Wales (not the UK) were for direct threats of violence?
The statute says "or" and an a) b) c) bullet point listing in a statute also means "or". Maybe you are unfamiliar with boolean logic, but I was listing the relevant lines of the statute which allow someone who did not call for violence to be prosecuted, and the standard interpretation used by prosecutors to prosecute people for non-violent, non-threatening, insulting speech.<p>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?<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c703e03w243o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c703e03w243o</a><p>Just like Elizabeth Kinney, this man did not threaten violence at all. He just said "they should not be allowed to live here."
> The statute says "or" and an a) b) c) bullet point<p>There is no c) bullet point, the part you misinterpreted as an or is an AND:<p>"with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him..."<p>>> A plasterer who admitted to stirring up racial hatred...<p>Admitted?
> There is no c) bullet point,<p>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.<p>And that doesn't even matter, because the text of the a) part explicitly says or at the end:<p>> (a)he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or<p><a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/III/crossheading/acts-intended-or-likely-to-stir-up-racial-hatred" rel="nofollow">https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/III/crossh...</a><p>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.<p>"Admitted" in journalist speak means he pled guilty. It doesn't lend credence to the idea this idea:<p>> "with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him..."<p>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.
I googled it and couldn't find anything credible about this. At this point, I don't believe it actually happened the way it is being discussed.
The UK is extremely litigious in regards to libel. Her lying would be an act of public libel against the crown prosecutor. She went on TV to talk about it. It's been well covered in everything from the IB Times to The Sun to the Daily Mail (as linked above), as well as fully televised on Piers Morgan. Naturally the team you obviously root for can just refuse to cover any prosecutions which are embarrassing for them and you can simply smugly say "well it's not in any source I trust so it didn't happen."<p>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.
Lol.
How about "praying silently outside of an abortion clinic"? - <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo</a>
<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gze361j7xo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gze361j7xo</a><p>How about calling a natal male a "he" -
<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arrested-children-calling-transgender-woman-man.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arre...</a><p>Or perhaps: <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/graham-linehans-arrest-uk-online-speech-laws-backlash-1235421213/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/graham...</a><p>OBVIOUSLY there is a difference between Russia and the UK, obviously Russia is worse. But saying "the only thing you can't do is call for violence against them" is a completely dishonest characterisation of the situation, when we've seen documented cases of police overreach and people being arrested for thought crimes.
Ok, there's some context missing from those summaries though, no? In the first case it's not just "arrested for praying" it's "arrested for being in an exclusion zone specifically designated to try and stop you harassing people undertaking a lawful activity". They would have been arrested regardless of activity, it's effectively a restraining order and describing it as "for praying" is nonsense.<p>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).<p>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.<p>There are cases of overreach, that applies outside of the speech issue as well - and indeed for any country with a reasonably effective policing system, it's never perfect. But these cases are not the simple slam-dunk that people will try and paint them as.
> In the first case it's not just "arrested for praying" it's "arrested for being in an exclusion zone specifically designated to try and stop you harassing people undertaking a lawful activity". They would have been arrested regardless of activity, it's effectively a restraining order and describing it as "for praying" is nonsense.<p>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.<p>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.
I've been hearing lots of crazy things about people getting arrested in the UK for posting "memes" or things like that. So I decided to look for examples. All the examples I can find are clearly hate speech, policed more strongly than I would prefer but not that much more strongly, if I'm honest.<p>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.<p>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.
The flaw in your argument is that it assumes a clear and workable distinction between "a joke" and "obvious hate speech." Yet one of the strongest objections to the very concept of "hate speech" is precisely that we lack a reliable way to stop the term from expanding indefinitely.<p>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.
<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/youtube-count-dankula-mark-meechan-nazi-dog/" rel="nofollow">https://www.vice.com/en/article/youtube-count-dankula-mark-m...</a>
The neighbouring pot must always seem hotter to the frogs that are being boiled in their own one, that's a rule of the kitchen.
> swaths of free speech<p>Which is <i>very</i> 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.<p>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 <i>must</i> reach everyone.<p>The UNHCR article 19 goes further, though. But it doesn't automatically apply to the US. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights#cite_note-:1-13" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...</a>
It includes `... and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers`.<p>And all these only apply to <i>governments</i>. 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.<p>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.
> almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech'<p>I only know about the UK, but this is not really true there.<p>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).<p>If you don't make threatening or abusive remarks towards these groups, you aren't breaking the law.
Yes. I think social media or app bans should count as well, as well as consequences for things posted on social media which are simply opinions. I think killing of journalists should count as well (so probably India, Israel, etc.)<p>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
Tor is primarily funded by the US State department, that's why.
Depends on what you mean by primarily. US government funding is still the largest single portion of their funding, but they are trying to diversify. Most funding comes from non-government sources: <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/financials-blog-post-2023-2024/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.torproject.org/financials-blog-post-2023-2024/</a>
Iran is le bad. Oceania has always been at war with ~Venezuela~ Iran, citizen.
It’s much simpler. The Tor project is politically biased in a way that they think the things the UK arrest people for should get people arrested.
>2023: ~12,183 arrests<p>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.
Sure, but it’s pretty hard to believe that the domestic violence arrests are increasing exponentially, isn’t it?<p>ETA:<p>> So it'd include arrests for domestic abuse where at least one component of the abuse was through WhatsApp.<p>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 <i>arrest</i> is going to be for battery, even if the charges filed later include the WhatsApp messages.
We’re the rules changed are this between those years though?<p>Cause if not a more than doubling is alarming regardless of how exactly the composition is sliced by online vs WhatsApp or whatever.
The point is, communications should not be surveilled at all by the state. It shouldn't matter that the Internet is sometimes used to commit crimes, the bigger issue is that the vast majority of non-criminal traffic is subject to snooping.
What proof do you have that this is the result of surveillance rather than from responses to complaints?
Do we know that was the case, for in those instances?<p>Could be that some guy threatened to kill someone over FB, someone saw that, and reported it.
Were they surveilled? Or simply read on someone's device after they were lawfully arrested, or sent to the police by the victim? You seem to be making a bit of a jump there
I’m not sure why you are being downvoted, this is a critically important point. Context is king, numbers alone are unhelpful
I’d much rather get arrested in Britain than Russia or Iran. And I certainly wouldn’t put the UK in the same bucket as Russia and Iran. Not even close.<p>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.<p>I also think Tor is great, just for the record.
So to be clear, your sole expectation of a liberal democracy is that it have a better judicial system than Russia or Iran.<p>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?<p>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?<p>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.<p>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.
If you live anywhere in the west, you should be more concerned by being arrested by your own government then by some government in the other part of the world.
I'd rather get arrested in the UK too, but that's completely irrelevant.<p>> Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms?<p>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.
I don't think it's completely irrelevant. Can we admit some nuance where the UK's fast ramp up of arrests for previously legal speech is genuinely concerning, but also that raw number of arrests (not even convictions!) is not the only basis for comparison?
What are people saying that gets them arrested? This important but as-yet-unanswered question is crucial to evaluating the severity of the UK's censorship regime.
Probably the most high-profile case was the Lucy Connolly one, where she posted:<p>> "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”<p>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.<p>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.
> Hate speech is a problem.<p>I agree, 100%. Donald Trump should have the power to jail people for things they say online.
That is not how the legal system works in the UK or USA. That said, I am worried that we are going quickly in that direction.
No there is a thing call the law, those are passed by elected people and applied by a judicial system that is not the executive branch. Hope that helps.
The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is, and more often than not it's used as a cudgel to silence the opposition.<p>For Iran and Russia, it is what Khamenei and Putin don't want to hear,<p>in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.
> The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is<p>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 <i>"are you just going to compile a list of 'bad words'?!"</i> Hate speech is not magic: you're not casting the self-incriminatus spell by saying the bad word.<p>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.<p>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 <i>could</i> get prosecuted for being inciting anti-straight hatred.
> freeze peach<p>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.
> which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred.<p>If you point out that one racial demographic is responsible for more crimes than another, would that run afoul of the statute?<p>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 <i>valid</i>, then this sort of criticism would be suppressed despite being legitimate, and could be weaponized against people.<p>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.
In the UK the arrests are mostly about "grossly offensive" speech. That's more of a grey area than the clearly defined hate speech. Often there are arrests and investigations but convictions on these are less. Convictions of hate speech also occur but are not news worthy and no one objects. The two different offenses are being confused and so it becomes news. In the US they don't have the grossly offensive category.<p>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.<p>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.<p>"Silence is violence" and "From the river to the sea" are topical example quotes used in this debate.
Yeaaaah, the Communications Act 2003 is not fit for purpose in the modern information age where [seemingly] the vast majority of conversation is taking place in digital spaces. Sidenote, I do think it's amusing how, prior to the Online Safety Act 2023, it was an offence to Cunningham's Law someone (posting a knowingly-false statement online to annoy someone into correcting you). That said, I'm more or less ambivalent about "grossly offensive" speech: most of the examples I find people moaning about are people being gratuitously abhorrent and should have known better. But again, there are examples of police and prosecutors getting it wrong.<p>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".<p>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 <i>"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"</i>, and the other <i>"between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty"</i>. 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.
The previous law used to control racial hatred was the law of criminal libel; it was successfully used to prosecute antisemitism etc. As a species of libel, it had an absolute defence of of speaking the truth. Now, clearly you can be clever enough to spread hatred by only the use of true statements. But we have reached the point where those speaking the truth about atrocities committed by a foreign government are imprisoned for hate speech, and vastly more self censor. Your implied claim that those criticising the law just want to be free to be racist is not defensible - and indeed, you're not bold enough to defend it, merely "find it interesting".
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Norwood vs UK was about Norwood displaying an "Islam out of Britain" sign.<p>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 r<i>pe gangs".<p>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 r</i>pe" or "eat the rich" messages treated the same in uk? Absolutely not.
If you want to spell rape on HackerNews you can just spell it. There’s nothing wrong with using the word in its proper context, or in quotations. There’s no algorithm censoring the word, and you’re not shielding someone from “getting triggered” by replacing the vowels with an underscore.
Re Norwood vs UK:<p>> 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.<p>> 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<p><a href="https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/norwood-v-uk/" rel="nofollow">https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/norwood...</a><p>Re Melia:<p>> 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.<p>> The stickers contained "ethnic slurs" about minority communities which displayed a "deep-seated antipathy to those groups", the court heard.<p>> The judge told Melia: "I am quite sure that your mindset is that of a racist and a white supremacist.<p>> "You hold Nazi sympathies and you are an antisemite."<p>> Melia, who was also found guilty of encouraging racially-aggravated criminal damage, was sentenced to two years for each charge to run concurrently.<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867</a><p>Interesting that the cases that spring to mind for you are literal neo-Nazis.
> Interesting that the cases that spring to mind for you are literal neo-Nazis.<p>If I had a penny for every time this happened....
> Interesting that the cases that spring to mind for you are literal neo-Nazis.<p>Free speech is repugnant speech. But I can make the case for far-leftists supporting Palestine action as well.
>free speech types<p>heh.
Apparently it isn't very hard to define as you just did so quite accurately. It's just whatever those who control the definition don't want to hear.
Law is always subject to interpretation and as imperfect as it sounds it is better than no law at all. And I'm not talking about hate speech specifically. Using this as a tool to silence opposition is possible and made easy in countries that do not value and nurture independence of institutions and have rampant corruption, often countries with authoritarian leadership.
UK is not exempt of criticism, it would be unhealthy not to, but comparing Russia/Putin with UK/Starmer makes it evident that you are more concerned by pushing a political agenda that by facts and reason.
It's not the puppets who don't want to hear, it's the puppet masters.
It is really difficult to define what hate speech is, it certainly can be used as a cudgel to silence the opposition though I'm not sure about "more often than not" and bluntly <i>everything</i> can be used that way: my previous commute took me across the lines of what was officially known as (translated) an "anti-fascist protection rampart"* to keep people from leaving a country that put "Demokratische" in its name.<p>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.<p>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.<p>* And to English speakers, "the Berlin Wall"
It’s Badenoch wanting to deport a British Citizen for what he posted online, not Starmer.
More precisely, an Egyptian citizen who was given British citizenship recently without having visited the country, and his views (about Jews, killing police) clearly not being factored in when granting said citizenship. Whether right or wrong, your comment omits improtant details.
> more often than not<p>Do you have any evidence for that claim or is it a gut feeling?<p>> in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.<p>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.<p>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.<p>In either case, your comparison does not hold up.
> 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.<p>Well it might if people systematically vote for politicians who promise to change the hate speech definition.
<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/04/grooming-gangs-scandal-cover-up-oldham-telford-rotherham/" rel="nofollow">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/04/grooming-gangs-s...</a>
So, use that information at the next election. If enough people care then it changes outcomes.<p>Again, try that with Putin or Khamenei. (If such an article even gets published instead of ending the career or life of the journalist.)
Just read the damn law before spouting nonsense. There have been hate speech laws since the 1980s. There are simply just more and more insane neonazis groyper-types online to which it is applicable.
I don't think groyper speech is (or should be) automatically banned, though. It's a point of view that many find abhorrent, but it should be possible to express it. Same for far left messages encouraging the public to "eat the rich".
Please do not equate demands for more taxations with calls to do more genocides of jewish people. The far right is uniquely problematic in our modern political landscape.<p>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.
What does "hide behind free speech" mean?
> demands for more taxations<p>That would be "eat the rich"? It looks like more demand for homicide and cannibalism, at least at a face value.<p>> free speech is a liberal value<p>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 <i>looks</i> like "free speech" because you <i>say</i> it is, but of course it is not.<p>> but calling for genocide is and should be punished<p>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)<p>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 <i>you</i> deem acceptable.
> That would be "eat the rich"? It looks like more demand for homicide and cannibalism, at least at a face value.<p>Very bad faith interpretation. You know full well that's not what is meant when this phrase is employed.<p>> 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.<p>Free speech <i>is</i> 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.<p>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.<p>> 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)<p>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.<p>You're pretending that the line can only be arbitrary, when every jurisdiction already has one. Look at that, for example: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_France" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_France</a><p>Or this: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...</a>
> Very bad faith interpretation. You know full well that's not what is meant when this phrase is employed.<p>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?<p>> Should we extend free speech to groups actively trying to suppress it<p>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?<p>> You're completely muddying the waters, you know what is a genocide. And throwing in a line about trans people for some reasons<p>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 <i>indeed</i> 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.
That comparison is not only highly inaccurate, it’s also harmful in that it distracts from the real problem at hand.<p>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.<p>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 <i>parents</i>, not the central government, can enable for their kids.<p>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.<p>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.
> He’s a proper democrat.<p>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?<p>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.
> The same Starmer who's cancelled local elections?<p>False: <a href="https://fullfact.org/online/council-elections-war-cancelled/" rel="nofollow">https://fullfact.org/online/council-elections-war-cancelled/</a><p>> Who's not looked at the polls and thought maybe it's time to go, because the demos clearly don't want me?<p>You seem to have missed the "did actually win power" and "this is how democracy works in the UK" parts.<p>I agree he should go, but I could say that about all of the UK politicians, they're all negative approval: <a href="https://www.pollcheck.co.uk/favourability-ratings" rel="nofollow">https://www.pollcheck.co.uk/favourability-ratings</a><p>> The same Starmer who raised the threshold of votes required for an MP from within the Labour party to challenge his leadership?<p>From 10% of the MPs to 20% of the MPs. As challengers would have to, you know, <i>get more MPs than him to win</i>, the only thing going from 10% to 20% is to have less pointless drama.<p>> People are already talking about the rhetoric being used around war with Russia as laying the foundations for removing a 2029 general election.<p>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.
> I love Australia‘s banning of Social media for kids.<p>Talking about ruthless dictators and true democrats in the same post.
> 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.<p>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.
> a democratically-elected official can wield the power of the state against you and harm your interests just as much as a dictator can<p>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.<p>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.
> He’s a proper democrat.<p>Cancelling elections and mass arrests of people protesting against genocide is your idea of a "proper democrat"?
"[A] direct attack on a democracy’s ability to form consensus" is a wonderfully precise term.<p>Splitting democratic nations through fearmongering targeted at everyone's online profile is an incredible weapon.
No, external influence is an attack on democracy’s ability to form consensus. No hate speech required to drive a wedge between constituents and make people focus on the wrong things.
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Maybe [the UK is not on the list] because this article focuses on technical aspects of overcoming blocking of the global internet in those countries that benefit from improvements to the TOR infrastructure. Maybe there are no problems circumventing DNS-level blocking with TOR in the countries which you mentioned. Maybe those people arrested (source?) were actually able to technically access the platforms on which they raised whatever they had to say. So maybe, the post is simply about a completely different topic.
Looking into the situation in the UK specifically, I found a description of the potentially underlying issues [1] and those are indeed worrisome. I still fail to see why one would raise it in the way GP did to comment on the TOR post.<p>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.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/15/britains-police-are-restricting-speech-in-worrying-ways" rel="nofollow">https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/15/britains-police...</a>
> I still fail to see why one would raise it in the way GP did to comment on the TOR post.<p>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].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tommy-robinson-uk-speech-claims-b1248644.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tommy-robinson-uk-speech-cla...</a>
I‘m acting a bit naïve of course ;)
The comments are simply dominated by the root comment, which does not even try to put it into context of the linked post.
On top, it‘s a comment riding the outrage wave. There’s no contextualization (a number is only the beginning of a story, not the end). Not a substantiated starting point for an exchange on the matter.
I‘d just like to see better on HN.
Are you proposing we ignore communications threatening violence or inciting harm? For instance Lucy Connolly's tweet urging people to set fire to mosques?
Much as I take a dim view of the laws and politics of England & Wales*, those numbers include "indecent" and "obscene" messages, i.e. dick picks could be mixed up in these totals.<p>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.<p>* 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.
I'm getting fed up of people posting these figures. Especially with a misleading description like "arrests for comments on social media". They cover a very broad range of offences, many of which the public <i>would</i> want to keep as an offence. It includes cases like pedophiles grooming and blackmailing children, stalking, harrassment, even people emailing photos of aborted foetuses to pharmacies.
> I'm getting fed up of people posting these figures.<p>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.<p>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.
Florida, 2020: 63,217 domestic violence arrests<p>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.
The Netherlands in the recent past has detained journalists on multiple occasions but you never read about that. Absolute horrible for a “free” country.
There is no central aggregated place for data about US citizens arrested for the sort of things the UK's Malicious Communications Act covers. There is no reason to assume that the US is more free. It could be much worse.
You must keep in mind TOR is funded in large part by the US government. It’s a bad look for them to put their allies in the same list as their enemies.
Yet I have only ever personally been prevented from speaking in the UK by Xitter, with that great champion of Free Speech at the helm. I was given a the spurious reason of 'impersonation' for my ban.
To put that into perspective, the number arrested in Russia was 3,253 in 2023.
Sounds like Russians learned their lesson.<p>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.<p>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.<p>In London, there are parks and guard free public spaces everywhere. In istanbul there are very few such places.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>You can't really compare the realities of these cities by simply looking at some numbers without proper context.
That's a stupid perspective. That's presumably Russia's self-reported numbers, not the actual numbers of people who were detained for speech Putin's regime didn't like. For example, in 2023, Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in a special regime colony, his lawyers were arrested, and then Navalny was murdered in prison.
American views on “free speech” are not global, both in terms of what’s banned and in terms of what’s not banned.
What are numbers for Russia and Iran?
What are people saying that gets them arrested? This important question, whose answer is for some reason never specified in complaints about UK censorship, is crucial to evaluating the severity of the UK's censorship regime.
When a dictatorship uses police to imprison innocent people the correct response isn't to say "but in Sweden there is police as well, see how many people they imprison a year".<p>Details matter.<p>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.<p>Why should the internet be exempt from media laws?<p>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.
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Am I living in a parallel universe or are you just a troll. In Iran you criticize the government on social media and you get arrested. In the UK you promote Nazi ideology and you get arrested. Is that really the same thing for you? Are you not seeing it?
He has a throwaway account just for this occasion.<p>Probably not acting in good faith.
He's a troll because those also aren't the real numbers. The UK law categorizes arrests under this category in the same bucket as domestic violence arrests.<p>The people talking about this never make the distinction.