[HN Gopher] Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community ser...
___________________________________________________________________
Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK
Author : FeaturelessBug
Score : 236 points
Date : 2022-04-01 09:28 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| pixelbreaker wrote:
| regardless of arguments about free speech. Using drunkenness as
| an excuse for anything is pathetic.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Given the date, it feels appropriate to point out that the same
| law also makes it illegal to send a message that you know to be
| false for the purpose of causing annoyance.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| This is fucking mental
| moss2 wrote:
| What the fuck.
| cjrp wrote:
| That seems like an incredibly low-bar for what's considered
| "grossly offensive". Then again, the worst stuff is made by
| anonymous accounts and the police probably aren't going to trace
| those.
| [deleted]
| purplejacket wrote:
| Looks like UK could learn a thing or two from the United States
| based on this story. Damn, I never thought I'd see myself saying
| _that_ .
| bjourne wrote:
| > The day after his death, Kelly, 36, tweeted "the only good Brit
| soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella buuuuurn."
|
| This is nothing compared to what people tweeted the day after
| Margaret Thatcher died. You absolutely should not be prosecuted
| for that.
| mariodiana wrote:
| I believe after Margaret Thatcher died, "Ding-Dong, the Witch Is
| Dead" hit Number 1 on iTunes UK. Should everyone who purchased
| the song have been sentenced to community service, too?
| smarri wrote:
| Interesting that the news article can freely print the exact same
| thing this guy did, and give the message a bigger audience that
| it had.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Fuck the queen and their backwards inbred family and power.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I feel like I must have been corrupted by the internet or
| something if the tweet in question is considered "grossly
| offensive". It certainly isn't _nice_ , but 18 months supervision
| and 150 hours of community service? I don't even know how to put
| my bafflement into words here.
| recuter wrote:
| Just wait until you find out about the "Hate Crime and Public
| Order Act" passed in Scotland.
| baccaratclub wrote:
| rglover wrote:
| This is exactly why "hate speech" laws are so dangerous. It
| gives carte blanche to the government to go after anyone who
| says anything any one person (or the government itself) might
| find offensive.
| oliwarner wrote:
| And we have a judiciary who can --still, for the moment--
| make and break statue based on their rulings via appeals and
| the Supreme Court. The government does not have carte blanche
| any more than a government already does. The last 2 years has
| shown us they're pretty much a law unto themselves.
|
| I hope this case is appealled, and the law thoroughly weighed
| against human rights.
| autoexec wrote:
| > And we have a judiciary who can --still, for the moment--
| make and break statue based on their rulings via appeals
| and the Supreme Court.
|
| One of the nice things about being able to ask for a trial
| by jury is that jury nullification can help ensure that
| laws aren't abused even when judges are perfectly willing
| to "make examples" of people
| iotku wrote:
| Add the idea that has been floated over the years into making
| law enforcement officers a protected class as well and it's
| not a large leap to see how such seemingly well-intentioned
| things can be abused by the state.
| hcnews wrote:
| Isn't that the US model? And yes, it's a disaster.
| Beldin wrote:
| > _This is exactly why "hate speech" laws are so dangerous._
|
| If you think any single example of a law being applied in a
| manner that is technically defensible but (arguably) morally
| wrong should rule out an entire category of laws - you'd have
| no laws left.
|
| My guess is that most laws are occasionally abused. The trick
| is to distinguish between those laws that invite it and those
| that don't.
| causality0 wrote:
| "Freedom to offend" is a core tenet of American freedom of
| speech. It is not at all present in the United Kingdom or for
| the most part continental Europe. You can be arrested for
| Tweeting something mean, for calling a police officer a rude
| name, for insulting a religious figure. Whether or not whatever
| it is the Europeans gained in exchange for giving up that right
| was worth it is up to you.
| MadSudaca wrote:
| At first glance it may seem baffling, but if you see it from
| the "different culture different values" framework, you realize
| it's just how people there want their society to conduct
| itself. It's no different, from this perspective, to how
| baffling may seem cultures where burping loudly in the dinner
| table is not frowned upon, where people really value their
| personal space or not, and on and on.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| It's not baffling to me that people don't like people who act
| this way. I don't like such comments either. What's baffling
| to me is the punishment given for it. Using the given
| parallel, I'm not familiar with a case where such punishment
| was given to someone who burped loudly at their dinner table
| (or some other social faux pas).
|
| It seems currently and historically, such social norms and
| expectations have been primarily enforced through social
| shaming and avoidance, rarely government intervention. That's
| the baffling part to me.
| MadSudaca wrote:
| What about China's supposedly social credit system?
|
| Maybe government intervention on such "trifling" matters is
| now possible thanks to IT systems, and we will come to see
| this as the norm, rather than the exception, as more and
| more people forcefully or willingly give up some of their
| liberties in order to have (or merely feel?) more security.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| If you compare UK with China then what is next, North
| Korea? What is the point of mentioning China, is relevant
| to the discussion? Is China a model of great society and
| personal freedoms that other countries should follow?
| ng12 wrote:
| No, the PRC is a model of a digitally-forward
| authoritarian regime and we should be shocked that a
| Western Democracy is behaving similarly.
| MadSudaca wrote:
| I don't know. Personally, I like my freedoms and I
| wouldn't like to live under a system implementing social
| credits as in China (have they done this? I'm not sure).
| However, I don't know what will work in the long-run.
| There's a lot of things I don't like about China, but it
| has done a lot of things right. I also know they have
| fairly different values to the west, allegedly, a lot
| more weight put in the wellbeing of the collective, even
| at the expense of the individual.
|
| So I bring China not as to put UK in a worse light, but
| to put an example of countries implementing these sort of
| systems of surveillance and enforcement.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I'm aware of the existence of China's social credit
| system, but that's not exactly a system I'm keen on
| holding up as a something to strive for. This being in
| the UK, I feel we should look at UK historical norms, not
| China's.
| MadSudaca wrote:
| I get it's UK and may be the most influential western
| country in the last 200-300 years. But time goes on,
| countries evolve and often they do so in unexpected ways.
| My argument is that, at some point we must detach a
| country from its past (whatever that means) and accept
| the direction its constituents are now wanting to take.
| Even if we personally don't approve of said direction.
| ledauphin wrote:
| I don't think "we" must do anything of the sort. It's
| important to continue to disagree with things, and
| articulate the reasons why, even if a majority of some
| other group supports them.
| seanhandley wrote:
| > It's important to continue to disagree with things
|
| No, it isn't.
| decremental wrote:
| Except it's not an evolution. There's nothing organic
| taking place. It's a concerted, top-down effort to
| manipulate and coerce populations into going along with
| things that are expressly against their own freedoms and
| interests by people who are by any standard their
| enemies.
| Radim wrote:
| > _a concerted, top-down effort to manipulate and coerce
| [others] into going along with things [I want]._
|
| How is that outside of evolution?
|
| Your definition of "organic" seems suspect.
| decremental wrote:
| If tomorrow the government commanded that the color blue
| is now to be called red, that would not be an evolution
| of language. It would not be language evolving
| organically as language does over time. It would be
| change by force outside of the way things change
| naturally on their own.
| Radim wrote:
| > _outside of the way things change naturally on their
| own._
|
| "Naturally on their own", you say?
|
| It sounds like you consider humans outside of forces of
| nature, outside of evolution.
|
| Are you a theist perhaps?
|
| I'm trying to understand your position, because to me
| humans and human relationships and human societies and
| human actions seem (obviously) a part of nature. They're
| complex systems, yes, but there's nothing inorganic or
| unnatural or magical about them. The same rules of
| biology and physics apply as everywhere else.
|
| And yes, coercing others to capture more resources for
| self seems a prototypical example of a (co-)evolutionary
| arms race.
| decremental wrote:
| I feel like I'm debating someone who is intentionally
| acting obtuse. I think you know what I'm saying and
| understand perfectly well what my position is here.
| Trying to shoehorn religion (something I'm sure you
| abhore) into this says a lot about the disingenuous
| nature of your motivation in this discussion. This would
| be more fruitful if you would just be candid with your
| own opinions instead affecting a passive aggressive
| attitude.
|
| Let's agree to disagree.
| syrrim wrote:
| Similarly, some cultures today enjoy the practice of tossing
| homosexuals from rooves. Before you rush to condemn the
| practice, recall that they are from a different culture, with
| different values.
| recuter wrote:
| I'm sorry, but under the new rules you are now guilty of a
| hate crime for saying this.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am from such a "different culture", and I hate
| criminalization of speech. Unfortunately, it is a minor topic
| in our politics and thus the status quo is likely to stay
| that way, not to mention that the EU where we are members
| wouldn't probably let us decriminalize hate speech; the winds
| in Brussels blow in the other direction.
|
| The USA is protected by its Supreme Court and the fact that
| the Constitution is impossible to amend at this point, but if
| the younger cohort could vote for criminalization of
| unpopular speech, I suspect the proposition would actually
| win. Definitely so on many university campuses.
| autoexec wrote:
| I agree that they would. It's so disheartening to see how
| quickly people have been convinced to abandon a freedom
| people had to fight so hard in order to assert just decades
| earlier. The folks involved in the Free Speech Movement who
| have died already are certainly spinning in their graves,
| but those still alive have to just look at the kids today
| and wonder where we went wrong.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| In the US, I may get kicked out of a dinner for aggressive
| burping, and Twitter may ban me (and has banned me lol) for
| whatever reason they want. But nobody's facing legal
| penalties for it.
| cortesoft wrote:
| It really depends on if you believe the majority can impose
| anything they want on a minority. Even if a majority of
| people in the UK want these rules, we can still argue whether
| a government has the right to enact that will of the people.
| xxpor wrote:
| I get the different values part, but even if I set aside the
| "as an American" free speech issues, 150 hours of community
| service seems WAY over what's necessary. That's nearly a
| month of full time work!
| akhmatova wrote:
| _18 months supervision and 150 hours of community service? I
| don 't even know how to put my bafflement into words here._
|
| This one of The Crown's protectors who is being disrespected.
| Now do you understand?
| [deleted]
| weego wrote:
| It's just standard 'edgy' anti-english diatribe from a Scot.
| It's really nothing I don't hear regularly either out in public
| or from friend-adjacent people here.
|
| It's bad taste and trashy but that's kind of it.
|
| The problem is exactly that it's not an unusual attitude to
| hear. The difference is who it was aimed at. So for me the real
| issue is that we're cherry picking when we apply a very vague
| and loosely applied law based on who said it to whom, and in my
| eyes it should be a valid case for the defense, and element of
| a judges decision for sentencing, of just how situational it
| is.
|
| Making 'an example' of someone is not a basis for a societally-
| positive criminal justice system.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| And in classic English fashion, they'll start picking random
| Scots to make an example of, and make the problem worse
| still.
| Apfel wrote:
| This is definitely a Celtic Vs Rangers thing rather than an
| England/Scotland one.
|
| Unfortunately we in Glasgow are still dealing with this
| nonsense in 2022.
| nradov wrote:
| The _problem_ is exactly that the law shouldn 't exist in the
| first place. Such laws violate the fundamental human right of
| free expression. Repeal the law and then you won't have to
| worry about uneven application.
| judahmeek wrote:
| There is no such thing as a fundamental human right to free
| expression.
|
| You would be better served by pointing out that governments
| tend to become more authoritarian over time & the harder
| citizens resist authoritarian creep, the longer they have
| before a bloody revolution is usually required.
| hermitdev wrote:
| I'm from the US, so please forgive my ignorance of UK law in
| this regard, but is this case special at all because the
| target of the insult was knighted (or whatever the correct
| term is)? Would it have been the same result if the target
| was a "random" non-knighted individual?
| nickt wrote:
| The Open Rights Group has statistics and a list of the more well-
| known prosecutions under section 127 of the Communications Act
| 2003.
|
| https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Communications_Act_200...
| basisword wrote:
| I'm generally in favour of some limits on speech. I don't think
| you should be able to tweet racist messages for example. It's
| obviously very complicated and something people are going to
| argue a lot about. BUT this case has made me change my opinion.
| Things much worse than this are tweeted every day and this is the
| one that gets prosecuted. It's blatantly politically motivated
| ('national hero', British soldier etc) and in terms of awful
| things people tweet...it's not actually that bad. Suddenly I find
| myself agreeing with the people arguing these restrictions are a
| slippery slope.
| [deleted]
| Msw242 wrote:
| Slippery slopes aren't really a type of fallacy. Much in the
| same way that conspiracies are often real.
|
| Outside of limited cases where speech can be linked to physical
| harm, it should be legal and unrestricted.
|
| And companies should embrace the spirit of freedom of speech in
| choosing not to restrict it on their platforms. (Or they could
| be forced as common carriers)
| f7ebc20c97 wrote:
| The slope is slippery because, given enough time, lawyers are
| always be able to form a causal effect chain from human action
| A to undesirable outcome B.
| krapp wrote:
| This implies all such causal chains, regardless of their
| nature, will always be accepted as valid. If that were true,
| no lawyer would ever lose a case.
|
| It's the same argument that people make when they say,
| because any word can be claimed to mean anything, any so-
| called hate speech crime can be used to make any arbitrary
| speech illegal, simply by labeling any form of speech "hate
| speech."
|
| It's the 'perfectly spherical cow in a frictionless void'
| model of society that assumes societies are not made up of
| humans with brains already aware that people can lie and
| attempt to game the system, and that no one will ever be
| willing or able to correct flaws in the system. Even in the
| case of OP, I doubt the UK could take any arbitrary tweet and
| sentence someone under the same law.
|
| That said, I think the laws in the UK in this regard are
| going too far - but a slippery slope implies an irreversible
| process. These laws exist because the people of the UK want
| them to. If they wanted otherwise, they could change the laws
| to reflect that. That isn't a slippery slope.
| f7ebc20c97 wrote:
| Okay, buddy, we have this thing called the Internet now.
| It's a magical place where you can be anonymous and say
| whatever the fuck you want. The cat has left the bag.
|
| All restrictive speech laws do now is push dissidents
| underground into radicalizing echochambers like 4chan,
| while at the same time rapidly expanding the scope of
| "dissident" to include anyone who says anything remotely
| offensive to anybody. Is that what you want?
| cjrp wrote:
| I think racist comments, for example, would already be covered
| under the Public Order Act 1986
| bloak wrote:
| It looks like they might be. This seems to be the relevant
| part of the Act:
|
| (1) 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--
|
| (a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
|
| (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is
| likely to be stirred up thereby.
|
| (2) An offence under this section may be committed in a
| public or a private place, except that no offence is
| committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the
| written material is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling
| and are not heard or seen except by other persons in that or
| another dwelling.
|
| --------
|
| However, it looks as though you might get away with saying
| some very nasty racist things in public if you were careful
| with your vocabulary, tone of voice and so on.
|
| Is there any protection for people with Tourette's or
| mentally ill people, I wonder?
| heurisko wrote:
| Someone with Asperger's who requires a carer was prosecuted
| after they loudly questioned a PCSO's sex in a public
| place.
|
| https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/teen-
| prosecute...
|
| So if that is anything to go by, it is "No".
| LocalH wrote:
| The article doesn't say Armstrong requires a carer.
|
| > The court heard Armstrong, who acts as a carer for a
| man he considers his father, had been diagnosed with
| Asperger syndrome and suffered from anxiety and
| depression.
|
| Also, Asperger's is not really an _excuse_ to say hurtful
| things. I have ADHD, which is related to both Asperger 's
| and autism, and I would never say something like that.
| It's not so cut and dry to say "oh, they have <x>, so
| they're excused".
| londgine wrote:
| I never understood why "slippery slope" was listed among other
| logical fallacies. It is exactly the opposite.
| goto11 wrote:
| Logical fallacies are only fallacies when they are presented
| as if the conclusion follows by _logical necessity_ from the
| argument, as in a mathematical proof.
|
| Often "logical fallacy" is taking to mean "bad argument", but
| that not necessarily the case. A slippery slope argument can
| be a reasonable and valid argument, it is only a fallacy when
| presented as if A _by logical necessity_ leads to B. But most
| debate arguments does not claim to be logical proofs in the
| first case. "Anytime A have been done in the past it has
| inevitably lead to B, therefore it will happen again". This
| might be a very good argument, but it is just not a logical
| proof that A will always and inevitably lead to B.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| This is a point I wish more people would understand. There
| are logical fallacies that always make for a bad argument
| and logical fallacies that are reasonable but not logical
| proofs.
|
| For example correlation causation is one that needs to be
| treated with care, but correlation is often investigated
| further by scientists to find causation. It does not prove
| it exists, but it does indicate an area fruitful to
| research further.
|
| But the texas sharp shooter fallacy and cherry picking data
| does not make for a good argument nor serve as a useful
| indicator of where one might dig for further information.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It even has a name!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Slippery slope is a _logical fallacy_ , and not a
| _rhetorical_ one. Logic and rhetoric follow different rules.
| Logic is purely binary - If I say "Burgers are unhealthy",
| and you can find one example that fits the definition of a
| hamburger that is made of plants and not full of fats, you
| have disproven my logic. Rhetorically, though, the point will
| stand as most burgers are "sometimes food".
|
| One great way of thinking about it in modern terms is thus:
| Rhetoric is Bayesian. You're operating on probabilities.
| There's a ton of things that are likely to happen but not
| guaranteed. There's a ton of questions to which there is a
| large field of possibilities, and one action can cause
| opposite effects in different cases.
|
| One of the best examples in modern times is "Appeal to
| authority:" This Doctor say X is true, therefore X must be
| true. Even large groups of doctors have gotten important
| things wrong[1]. Thus, a logical fallacy - X says Y is enough
| to create a predicate as the beginning of a chain of logic,
| but it is not "Proof" within a logical chain. "X says Y. X is
| a Doctor. Therefore Y" is fallacious logic. Nonetheless, you
| should listen to doctors, because rhetorically they probably
| know what they're talking about on medical issues.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
| trashtester wrote:
| A "slippery slope" argument that something is dangerous is,
| imho, similar to use a corellation to argue that there is a
| direct causal link between two observations. Neither are
| sufficient to prove such claims. But, both _may_, depending
| on other information, be evidence supporting the claims, even
| if they do not prove the claim outright.
|
| In other words, slippery slope areguments (like correlation
| arguments) are fallacies if they are claimed as definitive
| proofs for a claim being made, but are not fallacies if used
| as supporting evidence for a claim or if arguing that the
| claim should be considered a possibility that may need to be
| considered or investigated.
|
| In bayesian reasoning, both can be used as evidence for some
| claim, that creates a new set of (posterior) probabilities
| for a set of mutually exclusive claims based on a set of
| prior probabilities.
|
| For instance, lets say you are concerned that some president
| may end up as a dictator. In a democracy, the prior
| probability may be relatively small. Then, lets assume the
| country abolishes term grants more power to the president in
| some time of emergency. In that case, one could argue using a
| sliding slope argument that the risk that the posterior
| probability of the president ending up as a dictator had
| increased after being granted more powers.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| When the UK brought in laws around lockdowns and handling
| covid people here were complaining that it was a slippery
| slope and the government would never give up those
| restrictions yet they did exactly that and those laws are no
| longer in play.
|
| In that case the slippery slope argument was a fallacy.
| autoexec wrote:
| My go-to example is all the talk from conservatives about
| how allowing same-sex marriage would lead to people
| marrying animals.
|
| "this is gonna be a totally different country than it is
| right now. Laws that you think are in stone -- they're
| gonna evaporate, man. You'll be able to marry a goat -- you
| mark my words!" - Bill O'Reilly
| heurisko wrote:
| There was indeed a slippery slope from "2 weeks to flatten
| the curve" to extended lockdowns.
|
| I don't think those policies necessarily were a net
| benefit, either, particularly in the case of mask mandates
| for children, which weren't shown as effective enough to
| warrant damaging the mental health of children.
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads
| /...
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Something taking longer than expected doesn't mean it's a
| slippery slope.
|
| Whether they were effective or not is orthogonal to
| whether the slippery slope argument is a fallacy.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Something taking longer than expected doesn't mean it's
| a slippery slope.
|
| > Whether they were effective or not is orthogonal to
| whether the slippery slope argument is a fallacy.
|
| That is wrong.
|
| What you mentioned is the very definition of a slippery
| slope, where the conditional relationships of the
| hypothetical syllogism do not hold.
| roenxi wrote:
| We've established - quite clearly - that in an emergency
| the government can lock everything down for 2 years and
| that lip service to liberty or human rights means nothing.
| Emergencies happen every 2-3 years. Why won't we see
| similar anti-liberty measures again in the next 20 years?
| 'We' 'know' it 'works'. It isn't even clear that we'll be
| spared another pandemic through that timeframe, the world
| is quite small these days and it doesn't look like we're
| winding back on the interconnected globe.
|
| Furthermore we've not proven that the laws have been given
| up; the impacts of the anti-liberty legislation in the wake
| of 9/11 took almost a decade to sink in and enter the
| public discourse. The surveillance and enforcement measures
| used to enforce compliance through COVID are firmly still
| on the table. Probably help protect children and/or fight
| Russians or something. Worked in China, great impacts on
| crime, etcetera, etcetera.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Furthermore we've not proven that the laws have been
| given up
|
| They expired on 25th March 2022 barring a small number of
| administrative issues which have been extended.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I know you're lying. you know you're lying. you know I
| know you're lying.
|
| Yet we continue as if nothing is off.
|
| This is society, where politeness is codified in law.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Emergencies happen every 2-3 years.
|
| The last time a pandemic of this scale happened was a
| century ago. True, with the destruction of animal
| habitats and climate change ( which feeds into the
| former), we'll probably see more epidemics from now on.
| And yes, the restrictions worked against that type of
| emergency - an airborne virus of pandemic proportions.
|
| It's a fallacy to claim that now that we know all that
| and the laws have expired, next time there's an emergency
| of any kind governments will just impose lockdowns and do
| contact tracing. There's simply no basis for such an
| outrageous claim.
|
| > The surveillance and enforcement measures used to
| enforce compliance through COVID are firmly still on the
| table.
|
| Oh yes, QR codes surveillance.
| gruez wrote:
| >Oh yes, QR codes surveillance.
|
| This but unironically. Do you not see the surveillance
| implications of having your papers vaccine passports
| scanned everywhere you go?
| whiddershins wrote:
| Scot Adams. Full stop.
| wepple wrote:
| Slippery slope isn't automatically a fallacy. It's a fallacy
| if you don't articulate why A would lead to B.
|
| The government using an anti-CSAM filter to further restrict,
| say, copyright infringements has precedent, so could be a
| valid slippery slope.
|
| The idea people pushed that marriage equality would lead to
| people being able to legally marry their animals was
| fallacious because nobody could articulate a logical jump
| from same sec couples to interspecies.
| radford-neal wrote:
| Your last sentence seems to itself refute the point it is
| trying to make.
|
| You refer to "marriage equality", not "same-sex marriage".
| So you presumably think that the justification for allowing
| same-sex marriage is not some consideration of whether
| recognizing same-sex marriages in particular is beneficial,
| but rather that the justification is that they must be
| allowed for "equality". That justification easily
| generalizes to any other case where someone wants to enter
| into a "marriage" that is not currently recognized.
|
| [ Note: Personally, I think the state should have nothing
| whatever to do with marriage, obviating the entire issue. ]
| kube-system wrote:
| Marriage equality is generally implied (if not expressly
| stated) that it is about humans. Functionally speaking,
| there's no evidence to show that people who like people
| of the same sex might move on to toasters. The movement
| was always about people. The lack of specificity was
| because the context was obvious, not because it was
| nebulous.
| singlow wrote:
| Look, if you stop considering slippery slope to be a fallacy,
| next thing you'll start making straw men arguments.
| roenxi wrote:
| It is a bit of a tricky one; there are a lot of valid and
| reasonable arguments in the same mental area as slippery
| slopes.
|
| But the argument that must be rejected is "this is a step in
| the direction of X, therefore it is equivalent to supporting
| X", which is a common argument and a bad one. Arguments in
| that form should be rejected.
| naoqj wrote:
| If you are in favour of limits on speech then you should not
| have a problem with this. Everything is offensive to someone.
| We should all go to prison!
| alickz wrote:
| By that logic if you are in favour of actionable threats
| being illegal you should have no problem with this. It's just
| speech after all.
|
| I'm also in favour of limits on speech, but I draw the line
| at threats and sustained harassment. I don't think the tweet
| in the article rises to that level, and I don't think I'm a
| hypocrite for allowing that tweet but not allowing threats.
|
| I do understand there are benefits to the all-or-nothing
| approach to free speech though.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's more that it should be clearly defined what counts as
| 'limits on speech'.
|
| "Nazi glorification" is fairly specific. "Grossly offensive"
| is not.
|
| If nobody is aware that it's prosecutable that you are happy
| someone is dead (a perfectly valid opinion), then you
| shouldn't prosecute people for it.
| jeffalyanak wrote:
| Just like how speed limits necessitate the arrest of everyone
| who drives.
| michaelscott wrote:
| ...over the speed limit, yes. The point of parent's post is
| that the offensive nature of a statement or speech in
| general is subjective and can change with whims and the
| time. A speed limit is objective and quantifiable; if you
| go over the speed limit stated you get fined, there's no
| room for interpretation
| Pyramus wrote:
| Speed limits are not objective at all - Germany
| infamously does not have speed limits on highways.
|
| And yes, speed limit laws, do change over time.
|
| And no, you can't be punished for having broken a speed
| limit in the past, that is not in effect today.
|
| Parent's comparison seems rather apt.
| hervature wrote:
| They obviously meant speed is quantifiable. You can
| measure speed and say "you violated the limit".
| Pyramus wrote:
| Yes, but it doesn't strengthen the argument.
|
| If society A says the speed limit is X and society B it's
| Y and society C it's infinite. What's the point that
| speed is objectively measurable?
| hervature wrote:
| That making a rule even makes sense. It is not an
| argument as to what amount is sensible, just that
| "amount" is sensible.
| tored wrote:
| Your comparison would be true if the speed limit
| differentiated on the intent on the speeder, e.g. person A
| can drive over the speed limit but not person B because
| person B has the wrong intent.
| linschn wrote:
| Ambulance, firefighters, etc.
| tored wrote:
| They can do that because of regulation, not intent.
|
| It is more like this, person A is in a hurry and is
| allowed to drive over the speed limit because person A is
| good person, but person B, who also is in a hurry, is a
| scumbag and therefore person B is not allowed to drive
| over the speed limit. It is very similar to how woke
| culture works.
| iso1631 wrote:
| In the UK it does. If you are speeding because you are an
| appropriately trained person performing emergency
| response duties then it's not illegal.
| tored wrote:
| It is not comparable, see this comment
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30877026
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Almost literally every person is "in favour of limits on
| speech" to some extent, so this kind of reductionism
| contributes nothing (and I'd argue generally makes the
| signal-to-noise ratio even worse).
|
| There are _huge_ numbers of interesting questions around how
| we treat freedom of speech in a civilised society. What
| restrictions can we collectively accept? How do we ensure
| that individual rights to speech are protected? How do we
| protect people from harassment or abuse, and how does this
| balance against the fundamental right to be offensive?
| Discussion about these is way more interesting than hot takes
| about how we 're all going to prison for being mean on
| Twitter. And worst of all it detracts from the serious
| conversation to be had about how grossly inappropriate the
| reaction in this specific case is.
| Pyramus wrote:
| I 100% agree with you. There is strong indication we are
| heading towards a more volatile world, and we need to
| collectively discuss these questions.
|
| I'd like to add that most posters here on HN are arguing
| conditional on living in a Western democracy. And most
| Western democracies have set different restrictions - but
| all do have some restrictions. E.g. it's illegal to deny
| the holocaust in Germany.
| tored wrote:
| Speech laws also requires the court to make a judgement on the
| intent of the perpetrator, the exact same expression can either
| be legal or illegal depending on intent.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Shooting someone can be illegal or legal based on the intent
| of the perpetrator, establishing the state of mind of someone
| accused of a crime isn't exactly a legal novelty
| tored wrote:
| True, but the intent here is very subjective, the court
| basically has to fantasize about the perpetrators intent.
| And what it usually comes down to is if the perpetrator is
| "good" person or not. Speech laws invites courts to be
| subjective in their rulings.
| chroma wrote:
| I disagree with restrictions on speech for the following
| reason:
|
| - If you limit what people are allowed to write or say, you are
| effectively limiting what others are allowed to read or hear.
|
| - Censorship means delegating a censor.
|
| - That censor would then be able to determine what I am allowed
| to read or hear. There is nobody I trust besides myself to do
| that. I definitely don't trust any government body to do that.
|
| Also if you're going to enforce laws against racist speech
| dispassionately, you will ban every major religious text. The
| Torah, Bible, and Qur'an have parts that advocate for all kinds
| of racist, sexist, homophobic, and generally terrible behavior.
| The UK government doesn't try to censor these books, so it's
| obvious that their censorship laws are simply a way for law
| enforcement to persecute people they dislike.
| autoexec wrote:
| > I disagree with restrictions on speech for the following
| reason:
|
| I've never once met a true free speech absolutist. We accept
| restrictions on speech all the time. We restrict companies
| from outright lying about their products. We (sometimes) hold
| people accountable for lying under oath. We even compel
| certain speech by forcing companies to disclose ingredients
| and allergens. Even for government some material is
| justifiably classified and shouldn't be publicly shared. I
| should not be allowed to make direct calls for violence
| against others, phone in fake bomb threats, or yell "fire" in
| a theater.
|
| There are good reasons to limit/place restrictions on speech.
| It's the same with every right we have. There will be
| instances that call for restriction. It falls on us to make
| sure that we preserve freedom as much as we can while still
| enacting sane restrictions.
|
| Laws against racist speech do more harm than good. They
| hinder our efforts to understand and confront racism and they
| are so broadly defined that they are easily abused. That
| doesn't mean other restrictions on speech are't a good idea
| though.
| trashtester wrote:
| The problem with banning things like "racism" is that words
| change meaning over time. Maybe some time in the future, any
| reference to "White Privlege" may be considered racist, for
| instance.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| The OK hand sign is racist now. There's rumbles of milk being
| racist.
|
| The scary thing that should terrify everyone is we are going
| to come to a point where being called racist no longer
| matters or nobody cares, and then your gonna see REAL racism
| come back with a fury and force you wont like.
| hairofadog wrote:
| While I am not condoning banning speech, your examples
| above compile into a pretty disingenuous take. While I'm
| sure an example could be found if you looked hard enough, I
| have never once heard of anyone crying 'racist' about
| normal people making the normal OK hand sign innocently.
|
| I have, however, heard the term 'racist' accurately used to
| describe people making an inverted OK sign when said people
| happen to be standing at a Proud Boys rally, or by people
| who otherwise spend their time hanging out with, or
| trolling as, white supremacists. [^1]
|
| Same deal with milk. It's only racist when it's being used
| as a symbol by people who are intentionally being racist:
|
| _> "One slide Dr. Novembre has folded into his recent
| talks depicts a group of white nationalists chugging milk
| at a 2017 gathering to draw attention to a genetic trait
| known to be more common in white people than others -- the
| ability to digest lactose as adults."_ [^2]
|
| That doesn't mean "milk is racist", or that drinking milk
| is racist; it means unabashed racists seem to enjoy co-
| opting common symbols as code for their secret clubs.
|
| [^1]: https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-
| symbols/okay-h...
|
| [^2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/us/white-
| supremacists-sci...
| defen wrote:
| > While I'm sure an example could be found if you looked
| hard enough, I have never once heard of anyone crying
| 'racist' about normal people making the normal OK hand
| sign innocently.
|
| https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-
| ove...
| a_shovel wrote:
| The OK sign is only racist if it's being used by racists to
| signal to other racists that they are racist. This remains
| true if you replace "The OK sign" with any other innocuous
| act or item.
|
| These kinds of statements are the result of a wretched game
| of Telephone. "White supremacists are using the OK sign as
| an identifying signal" became "Crazy leftists say the OK
| sign is racist". It's an effective recruiting tool on the
| uninformed.
| hairofadog wrote:
| You said what I was trying to say a lot more succinctly.
| trashtester wrote:
| That could definitely happen. That would be kind of similar
| to how being called "communist" lost most of its power from
| overuse. In a generation or two, maybe even "nazi" will no
| longer be seen as an insult in parts of society.
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| Wait, milk?
| bee_rider wrote:
| These are just pranks made by 4chan and their ilk.
|
| The circle of life on this sort of thing, I think, goes
| something like:
|
| Come up with a contrived reason milk could be considered
| racist, film a video or whatever about chugging milk
| while making a racist screed, get criticized for being a
| weirdo, and then some reactionary clickbait site can have
| the headline "Internet user called 'racist' for drinking
| milk."
|
| It is dumb, don't worry about it.
| [deleted]
| nemo44x wrote:
| People of European decent tend to be much better at
| digesting milk (lactose) as adults and there's a meme
| that if you can't chug a bottle of milk you have to get
| out. Or something silly like that. Turns out groups of
| people with ancestry in east Africa have the gene for
| lactose as well.
|
| So, milk could become a symbol of this if used within
| that context. People are paranoid enough today that if a
| picture of someone enjoying a glass of a milk was
| published, they could assume it was a signal of this. And
| it could be, to be sure.
| mlindner wrote:
| Well "white privledge" IS racist. So that's already the case.
| Just some people don't consider it that way.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Only if you're defining both terms to mean something
| different than in the contexts in which they normally are
| used.
|
| Priviledge is concept that certain attributes a person has
| confer advantages in the ways they interact with the world.
| Acknowledging that is not and cannot be bigotry.
|
| Unless you're saying that white privilege is a
| _consequence_ of racism, which would be correct, but not
| really relevant to the discussion here.
| anotherhue wrote:
| The distinction between what is and what is considered so
| is rather important.
| nailer wrote:
| It depends. Judging people's lived experienced based on
| their skin color may be racism under the MLK definition,
| but the far left has created a new definition of racism
| that allows one to discriminate against others based on the
| color of their skin, for paler colors of skin.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| > Maybe some time in the future, any reference to "White
| Privlege" may be considered racist, for instance.
|
| Who says that's not already the case outside of the coastal
| cities?
| prmoustache wrote:
| This is the reason justice system has the concept of
| prescription. You cannot be prosecuted for something that
| wasn't deem unlawful in the past and even if there was
| already a law about it we can't condemn you if we failed to
| do so within a not distant past. It pretty much cover you in
| case meaning change over time.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| So, racism is discrimination against a person or people on
| the basis of their membership of a particular racial or
| ethnic group.
|
| Whereas white privilege is about the inherent advantages
| possessed by a white person on the basis of their race in a
| society characterized by racial inequality and injustice.
|
| Using the term white privilege is not racist because it's
| talking about social structure that are racist.
|
| Sure language changes over time. But not that much.
| akomtu wrote:
| The so-called "white privilege" is the abstract invisible
| but ever present enemy that's present in every cult. People
| in North Korea believe that spies and greedy capitalists
| are trying to invade their great country, and only the wise
| and pure leader Kim is going to save them. Orthodox muslims
| believe that the christian non-believers are the absolute
| evil, and the orthodox christians think the same about
| muslims. Different christian cults believe they are
| surrounded by fake christian cults and only they have the
| true understanding of what's right and what's wrong. The
| so-called woke believe in the ever-present whiteness evil
| and only their anti-racist doctrine will save them. My
| point is that if someone insists that you're surrounded by
| enemies, and the only way to save your soul is to blindly
| accept the Teaching, you're in a cult. The enemies part is
| what makes cult a cult, because the cult organisers want
| they followers to have a shallow us-vs-them mentality.
| sharikous wrote:
| It's more about the political undertone.
|
| Your definition of racism is one of many. Today there is a
| strong push to define racism only as discrimination against
| historically oppressed racial minorities.
|
| It's a loaded term now, not a neutral one.
| heurisko wrote:
| White working class boys in the UK are amongst the least
| likely to go to university in the UK, they don't have a
| privilege for being white.
|
| I think terms like white privilege drive resentment and are
| divisive.
|
| "In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the
| white community. Most working- and middle-class white
| Americans don't feel that they have been particularly
| privileged by their race..." Barack Obama.
|
| https://constitutioncenter.org/amoreperfectunion/
| OwlsParlay wrote:
| Do you think white people who lived during the time of
| segregation or redlining had white privilege? Because
| there's plenty of those people still living today. The
| kids shouting slurs at Ruby Bridges are still alive.
|
| Now yes, obviously white privilege is not the only axis
| of oppression and both in the UK and US class privilege
| is overlooked to a massive degree but pretending white
| privilege is a racist term is stupid.
| twofornone wrote:
| >Do you think white people who lived during the time of
| segregation or redlining had white privilege
|
| Whites were 80-90% of the population during that time,
| assigning a vague notion of "privilege" to an entire race
| of people as a basis for reverse racism is not only
| useless, but misleading, because these "privileged"
| people were still in competition with other whites (and
| non-redlined minorities). The implication is that they
| collectively derived benefit from unfair rules against
| blacks, but frankly this is a dishonest assertion.
|
| >but pretending white privilege is a racist term is
| stupid.
|
| >Racist: discriminatory especially on the basis of race
| or religion
|
| You're playing wordgames to resolve the cognitive
| dissonance that comes with claiming to be anti-racist
| while using intrinsically racist terminology. Especially
| when the implication of "white privilege" is that there
| is an unfair advantage _based on race_ which needs to be
| corrected _based on race_. Reverse racism is still
| racism, even if merriam-webster tries to redefine the
| term.
| OwlsParlay wrote:
| > Whites were 80-90% of the population during that time,
| assigning a vague notion of "privilege" to an entire race
| of people as a basis for reverse racism is not only
| useless, but misleading, because these "privileged"
| people were still in competition with other whites (and
| non-redlined minorities). The implication is that they
| collectively derived benefit from unfair rules against
| blacks, but frankly this is a dishonest assertion.
|
| They absolutlely did derive a collective benefit, i'm
| astounded anyone can deny this. Are you just ignorant of
| just how badly treated black people were compared to
| white people in that period?
| twofornone wrote:
| How much "benefit" do you think the average white person
| received from segregation and redlining less than 10% of
| the population? How would you even quantify it?
| Marginally lower property prices/rents in a small subset
| of neighborhoods? Slightly smaller class sizes in pre-
| modern schools? Slightly less competition for unskilled
| labor?
|
| This is rhetorical sleight of hand, sophistry which
| conflates mistreatment with collective benefit to justify
| racial wealth transfer and power mongering, all on behalf
| of the so called anti-racists.
| [deleted]
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| _they don 't have a privilege for being white._
|
| As a white (and formerly working class) boy from the UK,
| I can confidently say that nobody has at any point in my
| life discriminated against me on the basis of my ethnic
| background. That is the extent of what this expression
| means - it does not mean that any individual to whom it
| applied is in a superior position relative to others, but
| _only that they do not suffer from disadvantage due to
| one specific thing_.
|
| There is a stubborn desire to ignore this distinction,
| and the reason that these terms become divisive is
| because people are too often manipulated into
| misrepresenting them.
| account42 wrote:
| The entire point of the term "white priviledge" is to
| justify discrimination on the basis of people's ethnic
| background.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The point is to recognize discrimination.
| mlindner wrote:
| The lack of having been discriminated against is by
| definition not a "privilege". What's wrong isn't the lack
| of discrimination, but the idea that lack of
| discrimination should be called a "privledge" rather than
| a "norm". It attacks people for not having hardship,
| namely turning something that's good int o something
| that's bad. The use of the term "white privledge"
| fundamentally applies that to make things "equal" we must
| discriminate against white people as much as we
| discriminate (as a society) against non-white people.
| Namely, bring people doing well down to the level of
| someone doing badly, rather than elevating the people
| doing poorly up to the level of "normal".
|
| It's a fundamentally bad phase to use.
| a_shovel wrote:
| Each sentence, though individually false, comes together
| to produce an overall point that is also false.
|
| A lack of a disadvantage others have is a privilege. The
| point of calling it a privilege is to emphasize that
| white people benefit from racism against other groups
| even when they don't do anything racist themselves.
| Benefitting knowingly from discrimination against others
| while doing nothing to end it is complicity. The term
| "privilege" is not an attack on white people, it is an
| attack on racism. It absolutely does not imply that we
| should bring down white people or be racist to them.
| Privilege will end when discrimination against non-white
| people ends.
|
| At least set up a monthly donation to an anti-racism
| organization, or something like that.
| akomtu wrote:
| The 'privilege' is just a trick to divide you and make
| you fight each other. If it was't black vs white, it
| would be a 'privilege' based on subtle shades of skin,
| hair, eyes or even height. Anything works to distract
| masses from the fact that the only real privilege is
| hereditary wealth. Having the right family name is The
| Privilege. It's unbelievable that the relatively smart
| people fail to see this elephant in the room and instead
| fall for that shallow and self contradictory "anti-
| racism" doctrine.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > the idea that lack of discrimination should be called a
| "privledge" rather than a "norm".
|
| But the lack of discrimination isn't the norm. It would
| definitely be nice if it was, but that's not the case.
| White people experiencing better general overall
| treatment by society compared to those in the same
| situation who are black is just a fact. Complaining that
| it causes reverse discrimination doesn't make that
| untrue.
| heurisko wrote:
| > it does not mean that any individual to whom it applied
| is in a superior position relative to others, but only
| that they do not suffer from disadvantage due to one
| specific thing.
|
| That's not the way it's taught to children. They're
| encouraged to think of their "privilege" entirely in
| terms of race, which determines whether they win or lose.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg
|
| > There is a stubborn desire to ignore this distinction
|
| Because the distinction isn't made.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Privilege is multidimensional, for crying out loud.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| It sucks being poor regardless of race (I grew up poor in
| Australia, so pretty wealthy by some perspectives), but
| having to contend with race is an additional burden to
| those who are not white in predominately white countries
| because there's another difference for them to overcome.
|
| WRT the white working class boys, They are not being held
| back by terms like white privilege. They are being held
| back by the very white house of lords denying them
| opportunities.
|
| In an American context, how often do you hear about
| social policies to round up Canadians who overstay work
| visas in order to deport them?
| account42 wrote:
| If you make up excuses for racisim it does not stop being
| racism.
| hwers wrote:
| Or that these days even people of color saying the n word is
| condemned, whereas just a few years ago (months?) it was sort
| of accepted.
|
| Making that into a legal doctrine would be quite tricky.
| rgoulter wrote:
| John McWhorter wrote an article discussing the word.
|
| e.g. The head of the NAACP used the word in 2003.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/john-
| mcwhorter-n-...
| tonguez wrote:
| "I don't think you should be able to tweet racist messages for
| example."
|
| we live in a world where saying "all lives matter" makes you
| adolf hitler 2.0. crime statistics are banned on twitter. if
| you say "its ok to be white" you will be called a nazi, and
| fired from your job. THAT'S racism.
| listless wrote:
| > "You shouldn't be able to tweet racist messages"
|
| This seems right on the surface, but the problem is that it's
| really hard to determine what a racist message is. For
| instance, if black people want to discuss their frustration
| with white people in honest language, it might sound pretty
| racist. But I'm not sure any of us would want to curtail that.
| FB had this exact problem not too long ago..
|
| https://revealnews.org/article/how-activists-of-color-lose-b...
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| > if black people want to discuss their frustration with
| white people in honest language, it might sound pretty racist
|
| Because it is.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| Aside from me absolutely being in favor of even offensive and
| racist speech out of general principles, you'd be surprised (or
| not) by how easily "racism" can be redefined to include all
| kinds of things that are very, very dubiously racist by any
| normal definition. There are extremely woke people who consider
| even questioning any of their arguments about race or class as
| a racist act. There are cases where a person making clear cut
| criticisms of islam as a religion is labeled racist because of
| its general association with the arabic world, and so forth.
| The list goes on.
|
| The number of people and public figures I've seen labeled as so
| called fascists or racists when their own clearly stated
| postures are emphatically not racist by any rational notion is
| large. Once some authority gains the right to prohibit racist
| speech, it's very, very easy for their definition of racism to
| shift as well.
|
| Out of many criticisms of the U.S. that the country deserves,
| its mostly rigid protection of free speech rights in a formal
| sense is one good thing, and it hasn't led to a hell of
| bigotry, or at least no more so than have weaker protections
| for free speech in other countries.
| ng12 wrote:
| This is exactly why we need free speech. It's a pragmatic
| position. Of course I would like to live in a world where
| people don't spew vitriol. But for the reasons you outline
| that cannot happen except in an authoritarian society.
|
| As an illustrative point both Russia and China have
| constitutionally protected freedom of speech. They just added
| enough caveats that it's worthless.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| > Out of many criticisms of the U.S. that the country
| deserves, its mostly rigid protection of free speech rights
| in a formal sense is one good thing, and it hasn't led to a
| hell of bigotry, or at least no more so than have weaker
| protections for free speech in other countries.
|
| Depends on how you measure it. The US has some pretty notable
| racial issues, even compared to other Anglosphere countries.
| I wouldn't put that down to freedom of speech laws, but it's
| also not a very good defense of those laws to say that it's
| affected the level of bigotry in the US.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| But is racism actually worse in the US? I feel like in many
| other western nations it's just more socially acceptable,
| and not so controversial.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I suppose it depends on what you mean by racism.
| Interpersonal racism seems to fly under dogwhistles
| moreso than outright statements now that it's socially
| unacceptable (in most places), where e.g. casual racism
| against Romania people is still pretty common in Europe.
| Judging from economic outcomes, though, I'd say the US is
| still pretty racist, even if being individually racist is
| mostly condemned (though I think it's fair to say from
| the Trump presidency that there was still quite a lot
| just bubbling under the surface).
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Your comment has been flagged by government moderators
| for racism. Expect your automated punishment shortly.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's fair, though I understand economic outcomes are
| very sticky across generations (IIRC descendants of Irish
| immigrants, for example, remain significantly poorer than
| other white people). Even if we could wave a magic wand
| today and eliminate racism altogether, I'd expect this
| inertia to result in black families having significantly
| less wealth on average than white families for many years
| to come.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| It's true that economic status is sticky (or in other
| words, social mobility is limited), but with black people
| in the US it goes beyond that into underfunding,
| predatory policing, gentrification etc that serve to
| compound existing inequities. While I think that we
| should aim to uplift poor people more generally through
| economic reform, in the specific case of black people in
| the US there are still definite institutional thumbs on
| the scale.
| ciupicri wrote:
| There's no such thing as racism against Romanians, since
| it's not a race, but it could be xenophobia. Or maybe
| you're making a confusion with Romani (Roma, gypsies)
| people.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Autocorrect - I meant Romani.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| "romania people" is a misspelling halfway in between, so
| I wish you wouldn't assume they meant the wrong one.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| Many countries, including many in Europe have some very
| serious, heavy racial issues that are both more ingrained
| than those of the U.S and in quite a few cases more violent
| or openly discriminatory. The U.S. however is generally at
| or close to the center of global media familiarity and
| attention, so naturally, the theme of its own racial issues
| is disproportionately magnified.
|
| How many major countries are overtly ethnically homogeneous
| in the world, willfully closed or hostile to anything even
| resembling the mass immigration from all corners that the
| U.S has welcomed for many decades with only moderate
| tension?
|
| How many people in European states will openly speak of
| certain groups, like gypsies, muslims and so forth with
| extremely derogatory words, but barely be called out on it
| by anybody? I've seen it many times, and go back to my
| point above, that in the U.S. the same things would and do
| simply get more intense media attention.
|
| The U.S absolutely does have a number of very serious
| racial conflicts simmering at all times, but all things
| considered, I'd say the country does a remarkably good job
| of usually keeping them from getting worse, regardless of
| its high tolerance for free speech of even the most
| offensive kind.
| ciupicri wrote:
| What European countries?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| France. Big time.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| Every single one with a Roma population, likely.
|
| Anecdotally, I remember having discussions with Danish
| family in the 90s, about racially-related issues in
| America, and in the shape that they took, I recognized
| how woefully unprepared they were to really look at their
| own racist attitudes (e.g. vis a vis Turks and
| immigration). When I returned in 2019, and had a chat
| with a gentleman supervising a number of different
| immigrants on some sort of work-integration program...
| well, I wasn't much impressed with his expressed attitude
| towards the workers.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| France? The discourse around islam is insane there, and
| you have an almost neo-nazi party like the FN getting
| 30%+ of the votes regularly there. There is no shame in
| talking about forced expulsion of _legitimate_ immigrants
| there too( "Remigration" ).
| noirbot wrote:
| I think the important comparison there, and something I
| often keep in mind, is that the US is a lot more diverse
| racially, even with its segregation, than a lot of other
| countries in the world. It's a lot easier for a country
| that's 90% the same race to not have open and prevalent
| racial issues, since there will be entire cities/areas
| where you won't even meet someone of a different race.
|
| It's easier to be morally upstanding about you presume you
| and your fellow citizens would handle a potentially racist
| situation when it's hypothetical and not just a fact of
| life.
|
| None of this is meant to excuse any of the awful stuff in
| the US, but to point out that there's a lot of confounding
| factors. It was a lot easier for Europe to take the high
| ground on abolishing slavery early on when they were
| century old empires who could still fill their coffers by
| exploiting people in Asia and Africa directly instead of
| importing them.
| nullc wrote:
| > even compared to other Anglosphere countries
|
| lol. I find it hard to not laugh at that. Having done
| business in US, UK, and varrious places in Europe, my first
| exposure to business culture outside of the US left me
| utterly shocked about the high levels of blatant and
| unabashed racism that was ubiquitous outside of the US.
|
| It often involved racial groups that weren't legible to me
| as an American but was was particularly striking in how
| unprofessional it was. In the US someone might quietly
| dislike some race or another, but in a professional context
| someone explaining a project delay with "You know those
| <race> can't be trusted to get anything right." would be
| shocking, but I encountered statements like that outside of
| the US a dozen times across multiple countries.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yeah, honestly it just shows how little americans know
| about the outside world. That there is even a discourse
| around racism in the US shows that people care enough
| about the issue. Outside the anglosphere, it is so
| normalized and institutionalized that it's not even a
| controversial issue. And when it is, it would be for
| issues that are way outside of the normal anglo overton
| window on racism. For example, it's generally accepted in
| france that you can't go to university if you wear a
| headscarf. It's not even a debate anymore really.
|
| Same goes for roma people, you won't ever really get any
| discussion on the racial dynamics or the socioeconomic
| circumstances that lead to the higher crime rates etc. It
| does not matter, the only discussion is around how much
| discrimination is maybe too much. The discrimination
| itself isnt even an issue.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>"I don't think you should be able to tweet racist messages
| for example. "
|
| Why not,and who gets to make the determination?
|
| I'm an atheist, and having so many blasphemy and religion
| protection laws in liberal democracies misused (or rather, used
| exactly as they are truly intended) so horribly has really
| taught me what poorly defined restrictions on speech mean in
| the real world.
|
| As for racist speech, I really truly believe that censoring
| does not ever serve its intended purpose. You are only breeding
| further resentment, driving the expression under ground,and
| giving people new reason to hate and feel oppressed.
| Pyramus wrote:
| > As for racist speech, I really truly believe that censoring
| does not ever serve its intended purpose.
|
| What is censoring for you?
|
| I don't see a single Western democracy that is not
| "censoring" or restricting the rights of individuals to some
| extent. It's just to a different extent. E.g. the US has
| speed limits on highways, but Germany hasn't. You must not
| deny the holocaust in Germany, but you can do so in the US.
|
| The argument that there is no grey area seems flawed to me.
| Instead, can we, as a society, discuss productively where we
| draw the line?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Yes, absolutely :)
|
| I agree with grayness, I just happen to draw my line
| fairly, for lack of better word, liberally - and
| specifically so that we _Can_ , to your point, discuss
| ideas productively as a society - something that censorship
| explicitly and by definition prevents! I am a proponent of
| marketplace of ideas and open discussion.
|
| To your example, I do not see German laws making denial of
| holocaust as even remotely effective. I believe they are in
| fact counter productive - I've met people who use them to
| confirm the notion of "Jewish conspiracy". I _do not agree_
| with these people! But I 'd rather have them spew their
| nonsense in the open, and be able to freely tell them
| they're wrong, unhindered by naive and ineffective at best
| attempts at censorship.
|
| (speed driving laws are not censorship in any way that I've
| seen the word defined. Not every law is censorship, not
| every action is speech/communication).
| Pyramus wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand your reasoning - why would some
| negative effects of an intervention automatically
| invalidate the positive effects? If you don't think there
| are plenty of positive effects, feel free to speak to
| somebody from the German Jewish community and see how
| they think about it.
|
| Which is my point - in a democracy restrictions to the
| rights of individuals are there to protect the rights of
| others. This rationale is shared by many restrictions to
| individual rights, hence the speed limit example.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > E.g. the US has speed limits on highways, but Germany
| hasn't.
|
| A speed limit is a censure not a censor by any means
| whatsoever.
|
| > "censoring" or restricting the rights of individuals to
| some extent.
|
| Censorship is not any restriction but restrictions on
| books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and
| television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc.
| Pyramus wrote:
| Agree with your definition of censorship.
|
| > A speed limit is a censure not a censor by any means
| whatsoever.
|
| My point is there is a reason every single Western
| democracy has restrictions to free speech. And these
| restriction come from the same rationale as a speed
| limit, say, that is to balance the rights of individuals
| with the rights of all other members of society.
| TomGullen wrote:
| Racism is wrong and dangerous, and giving oxygen to it helps
| propagate and give validity to it.
|
| Censoring it might keep the racists to their ugly selves, but
| that's OK with me.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I agree with first claim.
|
| We clearly disagree on the second so can you elaborate? I
| believe formal legal censorship of an expression GIVES it
| oxygen and will subsequently increase it.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| My understanding is that studies show deplatforming
| actually works if the goal is to remove the broader
| cultural influence of a group. That is to say, if there
| is a group on platform A who are then group-banned from
| platform A, when they move to platform B the group is
| actually smaller in size and has less influence. If this
| happens from platform B to platform C the group continues
| to become smaller and have less influence. The same
| papers I read also pointed out that the people who follow
| the group across platforms become more and more
| entrenched though, which is also interesting.
| kansface wrote:
| Or you know, occasionally you accidentally create a new
| front in the culture war which is far more expansive and
| destructive than the side effects of the original
| problem.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| If this were true, "heretical" movements (Christians in
| the Roman Empire, Protestants in the 16th century,
| Liberals in the 19th century, Nationalists in multi-
| national empires of the early 20th century) would have
| never prevailed, because they were "deplatformed" by the
| powers-that-be with vigor. In fact, they were often even
| decapitated, not just deplatformed. But they were often
| successful in the end anyway.
|
| Brute force (and deplatforming _is_ brute force) isn 't
| an automatic recipe for victory in a war of ideas.
| autoexec wrote:
| > and giving oxygen to it helps propagate and give validity
| to it.
|
| Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If you actually care
| about fighting racism, you have to be able to see it. You
| have to be able to understand it. You have to be able to
| track it. Driving racist rhetoric underground, making it
| hard to follow what groups are being targeted or what lies
| are being told, making it more difficult to identify who is
| involved in racist groups, what their numbers are, and who
| is listening to them doesn't help fight racism. Racism
| exists, and we need to face it. We can't just hide it away
| so that we can feel better or pretend the problem is
| solved.
|
| You can't fight an enemy you aren't allowed to see.
| ellopoppit wrote:
| "Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is
| covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing
| ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light,
| injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the
| tension its exposing creates, to the light of human
| conscience and the air of national opinion before it can
| be cured."
| yibg wrote:
| Who gets to define what is racism and what isn't? And how
| broadly do we apply this logic? Racism is wrong and
| dangerous so we can censor. What about sexism? Ageism?
| Heightism? Extend this out and anything that can be
| potentially offensive to anyone shouldn't be allowed.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>"Censoring it might keep the racists to their ugly
| selves, but that's OK with me. "
|
| I used to think of "Racism" and "Racist" as binary . You
| either ARE or are NOT a racist (and "I am definitely
| not!":). Life, and people smarter than myself, have
| thoroughly convinced me that it is a spectrum instead. The
| most open-minded, liberal, self-aware, "un-racist" people
| I've met realize there are impulses, tendencies, biases in
| all of us. Kind of like some of the smartest and most
| knowledgeable people are humble and aware of their gaps of
| knowledge. Thinking racism is binary and "I'm not it",
| blinds you to many aspects of it.
|
| I remember a poor but enlightening joke a long time ago:
| "Those driving slower than myself are idiots; those driving
| faster are maniacs". I feel we may have similar personal
| line on racism spectrum: Those more close-minded than
| myself are "Racists!!!" those more open minded are
| "Woke!!!".
|
| Which is to say - I don't think there's an easy, small,
| easily identifiable group that we should just lock up. We
| can start at the bottom of spectrum and quickly agree that
| "well these people are _definitely_ racist ", but pretty
| soon we'll get to the delta between our two lines, and then
| who gets to decide who is locked up / what should be
| censored? Whoever we eliminate, whoever we lock up, there's
| going to now be the next person/group/opinion that is now
| at the new bottom and needs locking up.
| twelve40 wrote:
| > Why not,and who gets to make the determination?
|
| Twitter, and its woke users, all of whom are already hella
| opinionated and happy to censor the shit out of anything that
| might not quite feel PC. And I'll leave it up to them. But
| when the government steps in and decides what's correct and
| what is not, then... it's not much different than Russia,
| really.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| There is merit to the idea of the 'paradox of intolerance.'
| If we tolerate someone explicitly being intolerant, what have
| we achieved except changed _who_ is allowed to be intolerant?
| tonguez wrote:
| "There is merit to the idea of the 'paradox of
| intolerance.'"
|
| no there isn't
| smcl wrote:
| The UK is such a ridiculous place at times. The same sort of
| people who get outraged about being silenced or "cancelled" when
| they post weird anti-trans hate and get made fun of are _exactly_
| the sort of people who will applaud this farcical court case.
| basisword wrote:
| Have those people done that?
|
| Edit: I see you've already edited your post to remove the two
| people mentioned (JK Rowling and Graham Linehan) so I presume
| they haven't.
| smcl wrote:
| It was a good faith edit I made before your comment was
| posted. No need for the snark.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| basisword wrote:
| What's the issue with the knife ban?
| whostolemyhat wrote:
| Stabbings are... good?
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| You need to be 18+ and present ID to buy a kitchen knife. Or
| even scissors.
| oraoraoraoraora wrote:
| The alternative would be selling pre-sliced food like most
| Asian countries.
|
| Anticipating news of someone being spooned to death.
| kitd wrote:
| Not scissors. Or folding pocket knives <3ins long.
|
| https://www.bromley.gov.uk/leaflet/122601/20/480/d
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| I see, probably the person I got this info from
| encountered an overzealous seller. Which is not unusual,
| Lidl in Poland requires ID to but non-alcoholic beer.
| Literally nobody else does that.
| jackweirdy wrote:
| The history of this law dates back to 1935, when it was designed
| to protect post office staff who ran telephone switchboards from
| being harassed by the public, and it that context, it makes
| sense. Of course in 21st century the law doesn't make sense as it
| isn't humans transmitting our messages any more
|
| Some legal commentary about its previous use:
| http://barristerblogger.com/2018/03/24/its-time-to-change-th...
|
| While there is certainly a slippery slope argument about the
| validity of restrictions on speech, that is not how I see this -
| this is legislative debt, and an argument in favour of deleting
| deprecated laws
| freedomben wrote:
| In many ways, we haven't moved much beyond the middle ages where
| "make an example" was the standard operating principle. Sure we
| don't publicly hang or draw & quarter people in the square
| anymore (which I am glad for of course), but the basic underlying
| principle of "increase obedience by scaring people when they see
| what you did to person X" is still very much in use.
|
| I really hope to see our justice system progress toward a system
| with a goal of reforming people rather than punishing people.
| Ostensibly that's what the purpose is already, but if you look at
| the output, it clearly isn't.
| paxys wrote:
| Crickets from the usual crowd who would be crying "cancel
| culture!" on all TV and radio for weeks and calling for heads to
| roll had the tweet been about something other than a cause they
| support (military worship).
|
| Governments and companies continue to get more and more empowered
| to do this stuff because people always show that it has never
| really been about freedom but rather pushing their own views.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I think this comment leaves a bad taste. It is dissing at
| partisanry where there isn't any. I personally know many
| republicans and democrats who have a staunch sense of free of
| speech. They all would be crying in unison.
|
| The problem with your view is 1) It is unsubstantiated - where
| do you see "crickets from the usual crowd"? 2) It is
| exaggerated and playing into partisan tribalism of people. 3)
| Creates more division than helps, does not address anything
| really except teach toxicity.
|
| You're flaming the fumes.
| throwaway684936 wrote:
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| This is a partisan topic. The reason why this has happened is
| an old law that has been repurposed by the police to pursue
| these claims. In Scotland, which has a different govt to the
| UK on this issue, the hate speech laws are even more
| stringent (and the police even more aggressive in pursuing
| crimes on Twitter).
|
| This is always going to be a controversial topic with too
| sides. That isn't apparent in the US because there are such
| strong protections on freedom. But that doesn't change the
| fact that there are some people who believe they should be
| removed: those people exist in every society, they are a
| majority in the place where this occurred, and they are a
| majority in many other countries.
|
| Saying that someone is fanning the flames when they say they
| support freedom misunderstands the topic totally. There are
| people who believe free speech is weak and decadent, the
| First Minister of Scotland is a lawyer...these people are not
| crazies, they are people in govt today. And there aren't two
| sides to freedom, you are either for or against, there is no
| middle ground (I live in Scotland, the primary argument of
| people who want to supress freedom was your argument, word
| for word...my freedom is gone now).
| farmerstan wrote:
| What on earth would make you say this? There are plenty of
| people upset over this including myself and others that believe
| in free speech. This is unfortunately in the UK which doesn't
| have the same protections as the US. This person would not have
| been found guilty in the US but the UK doesn't have the same
| level of freedoms.
| exolymph wrote:
| So you agree that cancel culture is bad, then? Delighted to
| hear it.
| nailer wrote:
| I normally cry cancel culture and I find this awful despite not
| sympathizing with the man's views. Likewise I'm concerned about
| the impact of 'nuisance' laws in the UK on legitimate dissent
| despite finding most protestors to be annoying.
| coolso wrote:
| I think you may be looking for an issue where there is none on
| this one. While "the usual crowd" absolutely rightly believes
| in canceling the cancelers as pushback for anti-freedom
| policies like the cancel culture embraced by the left and
| progressives, I just Googled the guy's name and there's barely
| any news articles on it at all aside from a few tabloid-tech
| style sites like this one, starting a day or two ago. I'd chalk
| this one up to "most people have no idea this even happened".
| elliekelly wrote:
| > While "the usual crowd" absolutely rightly believes in
| canceling the cancelers as pushback for anti-freedom policies
| like the cancel culture embraced by the left and progressives
|
| Unironically canceling the cancelers to pushback against
| cancel culture? Maybe the horseshoe theory has some merit
| after all.
| coolso wrote:
| Certainly, it is the cancelers who are most upset when
| their behavior comes back around and bites them in the
| behind.
|
| Do you also have a problem with robbers being punished by
| the justice system and having their ill-begotten spoils
| returned to their rightful owners? It's really no
| different.
| elliekelly wrote:
| It is different. Fundamentally different. One is
| retributive (A did it to B so B is "justified" in doing
| it to A, too) and the other is restorative (A took from B
| so "justice" is served by A returning it to B). Everyone
| is _worse_ off in the first scenario (an eye for an eye
| and all...) while everyone is back to where they started
| in the second scenario.
|
| A better example might be punishing a murderer with the
| death penalty. But most people who oppose retributive
| "justice", myself included, do indeed have a problem with
| that system so it's still not a particularly persuasive
| point.
|
| If a person believes $action is wrong but are able to
| rationalize why it's only wrong when _others_ do it but
| it's justified and permissible when _they_ do it then it
| seems to me that the hullabaloo over $action is just a
| pretext and real issue they're mad about is _who_ is
| doing it rather than the $action itself.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| because it didn't happen in the US. we've long since accepted
| that freedom of thought in Europe is a lost cause.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| Mostly because they spent all their time shouting about it when
| he was initially arrested. Why get worked up twice over the
| same issue? UK gonna UK.
| liquidise wrote:
| Disc: american commenting on uk legal matters.
|
| > people _always_ show that it has _never_ really been about
| freedom (emphasis mine)
|
| Which people? They always act this way? It was never about
| freedom, for anyone? Who could possibly say this
| authoritatively?
|
| I think the last ~5 years has put a bright light onto freedom
| of speech. It is a complicated topic with some surprisingly
| nuanced positions. Does it include the ability to say what you
| want wherever you want? Or without consequence? There are
| multiple vectors to it.
|
| I consider myself a free speech advocate. But i have no
| military fetishism that you claim is one of the root causes for
| free speech support (a weird combo). I support free speech
| because... i think people speaking their mind freely is a net
| positive. That appears to be increasingly controversial these
| days. That's fine, more room for discussion.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| agentdrtran wrote:
| The largest media outlets that beat the freedom of speech
| drum (fox, other right wing sites) never do so in response to
| people whose speech they don't like being silenced.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| One major factor is a disagreement in what counts as
| speech. I see this from people individually discussing
| topics and from official stances of platforms, even
| supposedly free speech platforms.
|
| One of the safer to discuss at work examples is how loud
| can speech be while still being speech. Is a concert
| playing loud music free speech? Is it still free speech
| when the music is at such a level it causes hearing damage
| for those attending? Even if some attendees are children?
| What if it is only temporary hearing damage? What level of
| loudness creates enough harm to another person for it to
| stop being considered speech? Where is the distinction
| between me causing you bodily harm with airwaves or with
| punches?
|
| Another example is bright lights. Having a sign up is free
| speech. But what if the sign is well lit up at night? How
| many photons can I send toward you before it stops being
| speech and starts being violence? Clearly aiming a powerful
| enough laser to cause eye damage would violate it. But what
| if it was a weaker red laser that I was shining through
| your window. If it is the aspect of targeting you that
| matters, then when if I set up a bill board and put a bunch
| of red lasers pointers that moved around randomly to draw
| attention, so it is no longer targeting just at you.
|
| Then there is all sorts of problems one can get into with
| photos and the numbers that represent them.
| tonguez wrote:
| " > people always show that it has never really been about
| freedom (emphasis mine) Which people? They always act this
| way? It was never about freedom, for anyone? Who could
| possibly say this authoritatively?"
|
| thanks for asking the tough questions
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| I'm on the right, the far right even by HN standards. This
| response is either comically out of touch or disingenuous.
| Nobody in my circles is celebrating this, it _has_ always been
| about freedom, and I have never encountered your straw man in
| real life or even on the dangerous alt-right forums where I was
| radicalized.
| ethanpailes wrote:
| If the national review doesn't count as the usual crowd, I
| don't know who does.
|
| https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-scottish-governmen...
| rsynnott wrote:
| The National Review is very much on the respectable
| ideologically consistent side of the Usual Crowd (TM). (I
| mean, don't get me wrong, it's awful, but it largely has the
| courage of its convictions). Rest assured that, like, the Sun
| and Daily Mail and Spectator aren't going to be decrying
| this.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Here[0]'s the Spectator decrying it. You're probably right
| about the Sun and Daily Mail.
|
| [0] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sending-a-mean-
| tweet-abo...
| karaterobot wrote:
| I don't know about "crickets". This thread is full of people
| who think this is a bad move.
|
| Personally, I'm of two minds about it: this isn't a "cancel
| culture" situation, because evidently he did break a law. He's
| not being shunned by society, he's just getting arrested for a
| crime -- however ridiculous the crime may be.
|
| The main argument against this sentence is that other people do
| the same thing all the time and don't get punished for it.
| That's not a strong defense. The other argument is that the law
| itself is inappropriately applied, which it probably is. But
| this guy wasn't engaged in civil disobedience, he was a drunken
| idiot who thought he could shoot his mouth off with impunity,
| and to his surprise he got caught in the system. He should
| appeal, and the law should be clarified, changed, or struck
| down, because it's being selectively applied and that's a bit
| scary. But, this isn't shocking, and the guy isn't a
| sympathetic hero.
| Aerroon wrote:
| This is yet another example that the United Kingdom does not have
| free speech. They've been doing this for years now.
| pphysch wrote:
| YouTube also removed a channel last week on direct orders from
| the UK Ministry of Defense, after it published a video prank
| involving the current Defense Secretary.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vovan_and_Lexus#YouTube_ban
|
| Who knows what sort of punishment those guys would have gotten if
| they were UK "citizens".
| Havoc wrote:
| Feels like it is on the wrong side of balancing freedoms while
| keeping things in check.
|
| Sure the tweet is terrible. But ruining someone's career
| prospects for it levels bad?
| zone411 wrote:
| In another UK case, a 19-year-old just got 6 weeks in jail for
| using a racist slur directed at a football (soccer) player in a
| tweet: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-60927111.
| minimilian wrote:
| What was the actual content of the tweet?
| garbagetime wrote:
| IncRnd wrote:
| That's the thing. People often don't know the contents of
| these tweets, so we don't even know whether the accused
| actually said anything, let alone something that violated a
| law.
|
| However, we are told that what was said was, "The spokesman
| said the tweet, which included Rashford's username, saw Price
| swear, use a racist slur and claim that his 'dead nan could
| have scored that.'"
| recuter wrote:
| I don't know about this one, but there was a teenager that
| quoted a snoop song on her instagram (not directed at anyone
| but rather in memory of her friend that died in a car crash)
| and got threatened with an ankle bracelet and a $1000 fine.
|
| And this is before the rules got even more strict.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Based on the severity of this tweet, the people who harass me on
| twitter would be getting life sentences.
| eunos wrote:
| Woah the infamous "Picking quarrels and provoking trouble" went
| global
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picking_quarrels_and_provoking...
|
| And they said PRC lacks global influence and soft-power.
| sreejithr wrote:
| I've been noticing how much I'm "self-censoring" nowadays. The
| whole "free world" concept is a lie. Even the "guardians of
| freedom" USA wants you to disclose all social media handles if I
| apply for a visa. That means whatever I say online is already
| getting profiled.
| Claude_Shannon wrote:
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| He's implying dead British soldiers go to hell. Not calling for
| violence.
|
| It's rude and extremely poor taste but let's not start
| pretending it was anymore more.
| tgv wrote:
| No, he wasn't. It's offensive, but the figure of speech "the
| only good ... is a dead ..." does not call for murder. And
| offending soldiers is not a hate-crime, AFAIK. The tweeter
| should have been made to pay a fine to the charity Captain Tom
| was endorsing.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| _" burn auld fella"_ sounds like a call to action to me.
| Krollifi wrote:
| Isn't he talking about one's burning in hell which no
| humans have a say in.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| You are correct, I didn't realise he had already died.
| smcl wrote:
| He's very clearly trying to say that Captain Tom is
| (burning) in hell.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Calling for the murder of a dead person?
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Was he dead then?
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Yes? From the article:
|
| >The day after his death, Kelly, 36, tweeted "the only good
| Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella buuuuurn."
|
| Very crude, but he was celebrating his death, not calling
| for it.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| > I have never killed any one, but I have read some
| obituary notices with great satisfaction.
|
| --- Clarence Darrow (not, sadly, Mark Twain)
| Red_Tarsius wrote:
| hhmc wrote:
| 'widespread' is doing some heavy (and bad faith) lifting there.
| car_analogy wrote:
| Yes, it would have been better if the poster had cited
| sources instead:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aylesbury_child_sex_abuse_ring
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banbury_child_sex_abuse_ring
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_child_sex_abuse_ring
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_child_sex_abuse_ring
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_child_sex_abuse_ring
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huddersfield_grooming_gang
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keighley_child_sex_abuse_ring
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_sex_abuse_ring
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_child_sex_abuse_ring
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_child_sex_abuse_ring
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough_sex_abuse_case
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telford_child_sexual_exploitat.
| ..
| hhmc wrote:
| So ~0.1% of towns, does that constitue 'widespread'?
| car_analogy wrote:
| I assume the above comment was flagged for its flippant
| tone, but I'm vouching for it, because it raises a very
| valid complaint about anecdotal evidence.
|
| The UK is a large country, so even if some event is rare,
| it's easy to find 10-20 incidents, and claim it is
| widespread. And if it's emotionally charged, people are
| afraid to call out such misleading use of anecdote,
| because they'll be accused of downplaying or defending
| the events, despite having valid concerns.
|
| This gives whoever decides which anecdotes enter the
| public consciousness the power to pain any picture they
| like, no matter how divorced from reality. I'm sure you
| can think of a few such cases in the recent past.
| car_analogy wrote:
| Those are the ones with wikipedia articles about them
| that I found in ~5 minutes of searching. Many things can
| be greatly minimized if we pretend the only instances
| that exist are those so widely publicized to earn
| themselves a wikipedia article.
|
| _Grooming 'epidemic' as almost 19,000 children
| identified as sexual exploitation victims in England_ [1]
| implies it is widespread, but it 's not clear from the
| article how that number is split between grooming gangs
| and other perpetrators, so it remains a mere implication,
| not fact.
|
| [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-
| news/grooming-chi...
| leach wrote:
| Breaking: man in UK jailed for thinking bad thoughts, "experts
| say the body language of the man clearly indicated he was
| thinking thoughts that go against public interest, the man has
| been apprehended and we hope to set an example for this kind of
| behavior"
|
| I mean this is satire now but with the way things are going its
| not entirely ludicrous
| Traster wrote:
| There's something I find loathesome about this "Send a message"
| sentencing. What the judge has done is send a clear message, that
| he won't sentence you on the merits of the case but will sentence
| you to serve his own agenda. The only message this sends is that
| justice has failed. It's always completely transparent who
| exactly gets made an example of, and who gets off with a slap on
| the wrist. We'll spend months hunting down every rioter in the
| London riots throwing the book at them and putting up massive
| billboards in city centres trying to identify them, but when a
| prominent tory steal millions from the tax payer in dodgy PPE
| contracts? Well let's just write that off shall we. Because as we
| know, stealing some shoes from JD sports is much worse than
| stealing millions in the middle of a pandemic.
| [deleted]
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| One thing I have learnt is that anything bad reported in the so
| called british press that other countries do, goes on here in
| the uk as well.
|
| Churchill summed it up best, the needs of the many outweigh the
| needs of the few, which means people will be made examples of
| as and when needed.
| trelane wrote:
| I think the usual analogy in places where you "have" to hurt
| some people for some noble Higher Purpose is about omelets
| and breaking eggs.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Churchill summed it up best, the needs of the many outweigh
| the needs of the few"
|
| Looking at the cases it seems like "the needs of few" at the
| top outweigh the needs of many. So cut the BS Mr. Churchill
| forum_ghost wrote:
| The needs of the many moneybags, outweighs the needs of the
| few moneybags.
|
| Seems correct on the money-adjusted metric
| travisgriggs wrote:
| > Churchill summed it up best, the needs of the many outweigh
| the needs of the few
|
| I'm disillusioned, discovering that it wasn't Spock (Nemoy)
| uttering this as his dying words.
|
| Did someone eventually tell Churchill that sometimes "the
| needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many?" Or do I
| have to wait many years in the future to hear that sentiment?
| lkrubner wrote:
| It's a restatement of Bentham's dictum from 1776: the law
| should do the greatest good for the greatest many.
| Churchill obviously knew of Bentham, but I think Churchill
| often put things more elegantly than some of the famous
| philosophers.
| standardUser wrote:
| The entire concept of "setting an example" seems like a bit of
| fascism that has snuck its way into liberal democracy.
| RobertoG wrote:
| Is that liberal democracy thing some time in the past when
| this kind of things didn't happen? what period would be that?
| john_moscow wrote:
| Such things are indicative of the general zeitgeist in the
| society. If most people were hard workers, knowing how to
| count money and expected accountability, you would see more
| sentencing for embezzlement and nobody would care about some
| random dude's shitposting.
|
| Sadly this isn't the case in the West anymore. Most people
| come from a rather meaningless and mind-numbing job, turn on
| the TV and expect to be entertained. And seeing your neighbor
| from a different political camp punched in the face is the
| oldest form of entertainment the humanity came up with. Look
| at many social justice programs now: "group X has been
| suffering historically, so let's now make group Y suffer in
| some other way to make it fair" as opposed to "let people
| from X and Y build shit together for the sake of prosperity".
|
| This way will inevitably bring poverty, people will
| eventually wake up and start asking the right questions about
| the dropping quality of life and affordability of assets, but
| it can take decades more of arguing on who's shitpost was
| more offensive.
| bruhvinston wrote:
| I wouldn't attribute it to fascism, because the concept works
| in any social group and was used throughout history. Even Mao
| said something like "Punish one, educate millions." I think
| the true conflict is about the dignity of the individual. Is
| it permissible to do a disproportionate amount of harm to one
| person to bring about consequences that further the goal? I'd
| say no. And that also includes bringing less than appropriate
| punishment.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _has snuck its way into liberal democracy_
|
| Not that I disagree that setting an example is a part of
| liberal democracies, but at least in the US, we've been
| "setting examples" since forever. It's just that as a society
| we deem most of the people who the courts have historically
| used to "set an example" expendable.
| timcavel wrote:
| travisgriggs wrote:
| There's something I find holistically loathesome that a) other
| people read twitter at all, leading to b) it actually matters
| and has to fall under legal jurisdiction. If people moved on
| and quit reading twitter, this just wouldn't matter.
| pwim wrote:
| The thing I'm most interested in isn't in this article nor the
| source it cites: how was the tweet itself reported or discovered
| by the authorities in the first place?
| topynate wrote:
| Same as usual - someone dobbed him in.
| FeaturelessBug wrote:
| I'm an American so I don't know that my opinion has much
| importance here, but as someone who has never really believed in
| "cancel culture" and who regularly rolls their eyes at the self
| victimization of politicians and celebrities who advocate for
| hate against marginalized groups then act like they are being
| bullied when those same groups call them on it, this is
| definitely eye opening.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| Stop using Twitter. Build open decentralized alternatives that
| won't cooperate with speech police. Defund the useless
| bureaucrats who exist only to police speech. Fire them. Let them
| compete for their bread and wine like all of us who work for a
| living.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| It sounds great, except for the "decentralized alternative"
| part that sounds great, but there is nothing available soon
| enough.
| dymk wrote:
| Fancy new crypto and system design does not and cannot solve
| societal and cultural problems.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| But they will solve speech-policing issues where some UK
| nanny politicians feel empowered to try to send people to
| prison over things like this.
| thyrox wrote:
| Have UK courts heard of the Streisand effect? I have a strong
| urge to search the said tweet to find what the hell did he say
| and I'm pretty sure it will be like the first or second result in
| google images if i had enough motivation for it.
| prmoustache wrote:
| The idea is not to hide the message but to condemn it and
| motivate people to not do that.
| conradfr wrote:
| It's actually in the article.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| Interesting case: drunken tweet to a small follower count,
| deleted after 20 minutes, leading to prosecution and conviction.
| The Online Safety Bill which is due to be passed, with further
| empower institutions to police 'harmful messages'. I guess
| ideological conformity is a good thing for stable society?
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| The fact he was drunk doesn't really have much to do with it.
| It wouldn't be an excuse for running somebody down in his car
| or stabbing someone and shouldn't be here.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Drunk in charge of a communications device is hardly on the
| same scale as driving a vehicle. One is likely to cause
| actual bodily harm. The other is most likely to result in
| minor embarrassment, except in a few wild outlier cases.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| True but you can argue the punishment isn't on the same
| scale either.
|
| If I vandalised your car or even stole it then being drunk
| wouldn't be a reasonable defence in those cases either.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| It actually might be an excuse to some degree. Diminished
| capacity is considered in many jurisdictions, and defendants
| who can demonstrate diminished capacity at the time of the
| offense can often get lesser sentences.
| cjrp wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_intoxication_in_Eng
| l...
|
| > Where the defendant is on trial for a crime of specific
| intent, his state of intoxication will be relevant to
| whether he formed the required intent.[8] This may prevent
| the defendant from having the required mens rea. If the
| defendant's intoxication is so significant as to prevent
| any sort of intent, this can lead to acquittal.
| onion2k wrote:
| _I guess ideological conformity is a good thing for stable
| society?_
|
| I don't think this is about "ideological conformity". No one is
| stopping you thinking, or saying, whatever you want at any
| time. The problem is when you use a platform to broadcast that
| message to a wider audience, especially one like Twitter that
| will show your posts to people who _don 't_ follow you.
| conradfr wrote:
| > No one is stopping you (...) saying, whatever you want at
| any time.
|
| Well it seems this law actually does that.
| onion2k wrote:
| Only if you think there's no difference between saying
| something and publishing it on the internet. When I said
| "saying" I mean that in a literal sense - speaking to
| people face to face. That is not the same as publishing
| something.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| FYI, and this is in the article, the law used to
| prosecute the man was written to prevent you from saying
| offensive things over the telephone. This distinction
| between a voice and a megaphone doesn't apply to this
| particular situation because the law itself makes no such
| distinction.
| throwaway684936 wrote:
| There are still slander laws, so you're wrong.
| candiodari wrote:
| The problem is that that is never, ever, where it stops.
| There's always people that society suddenly decides are
| "really important", usually the most dumb-witted, cruel
| abusers you can come up with.
|
| And of course, the rules don't apply to them. Just look at
| the president of France, if you want to see a particularly
| bad fuckup. He, and his wife, have confessed, publicly, on
| TV, repeatedly to having a paedophilic relationship, where
| she abused her job to fuck children (she was even cheating on
| her husband doing it). He was 15, she was 40 years old at the
| time. Not only have they not been sued (in France, both would
| be punished)
|
| Needless to say, a whole bunch of people were sued for
| stating this during the campaign, as well as for a bunch of
| other negative things they said about him.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigitte_Macron
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron#Personal_life
| onion2k wrote:
| _a whole bunch of people were sued for stating this during
| the campaign_
|
| The burden of proof for libel action is _very_ different to
| the burden of proof for criminal liability. It 's the
| difference between civil and criminal law - they're worlds
| apart. You can't really compare the two, despite them both
| being based around the act of writing something on the
| internet. Posting something potentially libellous on
| Twitter won't get you convicted of a crime, but it
| absolutely could get you sued.
| ttybird2 wrote:
| The linked article say that they met when he was 15 and
| that they became a couple when he was 18.
|
| _" in France, both would be punished"_
|
| It seems absurd to me that both the victim and the abuser
| would be punished. Do you have any source for this?
| kleene_op wrote:
| People digging up old stories on Macron's and his wife are
| anything but concerned about helping justice. They're only
| interested in proving Macron was abused by his wife so she
| can get convicted and then he (the victim!) gets hit as a
| side effect.
|
| People doing that kind crap have no limit to how low
| they're willing to drop their common decency to promote
| their shitty political agenda: They spread their lies over
| social networks, alienate the debate with inane affairs and
| waste valuable resources from the judicial system.
|
| I'm glad those idiots are getting sued.
| Fradow wrote:
| > He was 15, she was 40 years old at the time. Not only
| have they not been sued (in France, both would be punished)
|
| That's not quite as clear cut as you put it. Sexual
| majority is 15 years old in France.
|
| Now, since she was his teacher, it could be argued that it
| was not a consensual relationship (if there even was an
| actual act, I don't pretend to know), but that would be
| something for courts to decide.
|
| In short, this is a terrible example of your point.
|
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majorit%C3%A9_sexuelle_en_Fra
| n...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > No one is stopping you thinking, or saying, whatever you
| want at any time.
|
| They literally arrested and prosecuted someone for an off
| color joke. This is as straightforward a case of "them"
| stopping you from saying what ever you want at any time as it
| gets.
| mantas wrote:
| That's like prosecuting for saying wrong stuff out in a
| street because someone may have heard our and friends' chat.
| gmac wrote:
| I assume your question is ironic. This case looks like an
| appalling over-reaction by an increasingly authoritarian state.
| [deleted]
| cm2187 wrote:
| It's also disturbing that the police complains it is not given
| the means to combat knife crime but thinks it is a good use of
| their resource to police politeness on twitter.
| dazc wrote:
| The police like to chase easy targets and social media offers
| up lots of opportunities to prove how well they are doing
| their job.
|
| The only people who are scared of the police in the UK are
| middle class, normally law abiding citizens. One minor slip-
| up and they will be on you like a ton of bricks.
| tored wrote:
| What is typical for organization like police is that they
| prioritize things that gets the best statistics in a
| spreadsheet, not the best result for society.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Yes, if you ever have trouble getting them to take a
| problem seriously then log each recurrence separately and
| ask for a reference each time.
| soco wrote:
| Which only shows their activities are graded with wrong
| criteria. But as we all know from office life, picking
| valid criteria for performance ratings is an adventure by
| itself...
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Are the police really motivated by this? Or are specific
| senior figures who are in they public eye and thus don't want
| their "reputation" shamed on social media the real
| individuals pushing for these kinds of legislation?
|
| I'd wager most police officers couldn't give a rats arse what
| someone posts online given the barrage of verbal abuse they
| likely get each day. They would much rather see the streets
| safer.
| skilled wrote:
| Governments sure do make it hard to love them.
| justin66 wrote:
| It's the nature of the average voter that they might whinge
| about their freedom of speech being infringed and, on another
| occasion, call for a guy like this to be punished, without
| appreciating the inconsistency.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| Stop setting up those user accounts with your real names.
| Pseudonyms are a thing in the net since forever.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Or don't have a Twitter account if you can't control yourself
| after a drink.
| throwaway684936 wrote:
| Can't believe I'm seeing this downvoted on HN. It's the
| absolute lowest common denominator of internet common sense.
| blockwriter wrote:
| This is a disgusting policy.
| anikan_vader wrote:
| >> Hundreds of UK citizens have been found guilty under Section
| 127, often for insulting, abusing, and harassing public figures
| like athletes, journalists, and MPs.
|
| A good opportunity for the Americans among us to feel gratitude
| at our constitutional right to insult the dunderheads in both
| chambers of our congress!
|
| It's times likes these that I like to reflect on how fortunate it
| was that the Sedition Act of 1798 was allowed to expire long
| before I was born.
| null0pointer wrote:
| I feel like we've got this totally backwards. If we're going to
| have laws around speech at all then it should protect the
| general public more than public figures. In fact some public
| figures, such as politicians, should be entirely exempt from
| protection. But we don't see it protecting the general public
| because those cases are never as high profile.
| digianarchist wrote:
| Good case for asylum in the United States if the guy feels like
| moving.
| taxyz23 wrote:
| This is why USA has First Amendment. Using the law to enforce
| subjective standards of niceness is the first step to political
| suppression.
| standardUser wrote:
| It wasn't a threat or a call to violence. It was just a
| sentiment, and one seemingly made in knowing jest (though I don't
| really get the context).
| [deleted]
| impalallama wrote:
| Reading that headline, I was thinking it might be like a specific
| graphic death threat against someone, or just some vile racial
| epithets but no its just the kinda edgy stuff you see all over
| social media. Upsetting that this is even a thing and sets a very
| bad precedent.
| dmix wrote:
| I remember 8 years ago when the UK police started conducting
| night raids on houses like they were going after the Taliban,
| because the people tweeted something anti-muslim after a
| terrorist attack:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/in-britain-police-arrest-twi...
| trhway wrote:
| To illustrate the effects of administrative suppression of free
| speech one can observe that Russian propaganda freely blossoms on
| the platforms where free speech is significantly administratively
| suppressed, ie. for example FB, Twitter, LinkedIn - the places
| where speech violating various "safe space" rules is handled by
| getting administratively deleted. Russian propaganda is a product
| of a free speech suppressed environment and easily thrives in
| such conditions. The rebuttals to Russian propaganda on those
| platforms gets reported by Russians as harassment and bullying
| and thus frequently gets deleted, and as a result the Russian
| propaganda stays there unchallenged or weakly challenged at best.
| One of the main point of Russian propaganda is rationalization
| and normalization of the actions of their fascist regime, and
| such rationalization/normalization naturally fits the "safe
| space" rules of those platforms, while denying "safe space" to
| that propaganda is one of the most important thing in fighting
| it, yet those platforms in many cases de-facto help Russian
| propaganda by allowing it to highjack the free speech suppression
| machinery on those platforms.
|
| Compare that to for example HN and Reddit - the places where free
| speech has much less administrative suppression and where the
| speech is mostly moderated by the community. There is much less
| Russian propaganda in those environments because any time it
| appears it gets strong rebuttals which stay together with the
| propaganda. As a result anybody exposed to that propaganda here
| gets also exposed to the rebuttals, and that is naturally net
| loss to the propaganda, ie. the propaganda can't thrive in the
| environments where free speech isn't suppressed.
| timcavel wrote:
| ruined wrote:
| now do the rest of them. we could revitalize public works
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Presumably, the bobbies of the UK are hot on the trail of the
| people who Tweeted
| https://twitter.com/dataracer117/status/1272737061703790592 and
| will get those community services sentences on the schedule.
|
| Death threats, after all, are worse than being glad someone is
| dead.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I like how to justify the "including verified accounts" it's
| defining "Harassment" to include a regular critique of her
| ideas but with a naughty swear word.
| Fargoan wrote:
| Accacin wrote:
| I'm a bit confused who found this message that offensive? I have
| a brother who served in the British Army and I struggled to take
| offense at all. Just one guy with an opinion.
| petercooper wrote:
| Another British case from this week: a man got 3 months in jail
| for being drunk on a plane. The judge acknowledged he wasn't
| violent or aggressive or even rude to anyone, but he did vomit:
| https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/drunk-p...
| juanani wrote:
| paulpauper wrote:
| Funny how some people take 'freedom of speech' for granted or
| universal..nope...that is uniquely an American feature, still,
| even after centuries. Democracy does not mean free speech.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The US only got freedom of speech in the 60's.
| andrekandre wrote:
| the 1st amendment wasn't enacted in the 60s so there must be
| something i'm missing... can you clarify?
| cdot2 wrote:
| This is part of why we have the first amendment. People should be
| allowed to express their opinions even if they're "grossly
| offensive".
| nisegami wrote:
| Are you sure about the first amendment protects against speech
| that would be considered grossly offensive?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Absolutely, yes. The first amendment not only protects
| against offensive speech, but even hate speech.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.A.V._v._City_of_St._Paul
| mherdeg wrote:
| I'm a little surprised that the UK press is allowed to name Mr
| Kelly.
|
| Once he has completed his punishment and appropriately paid for
| his crimes against society and the late Captain Moore, why will
| Mr Kelly still be newsworthy?
|
| Won't he earn the right to have his crimes forgotten?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-01 23:01 UTC)