Comment by okeuro49
14 hours ago
In the UK there is "social media intelligence", where AI systems scan the firehose of messages as they appear. [1]
So people have been arrested for posting something online, even if nobody appears to have seen it, and they delete it shortly after.
The policing is selective, depending on political view. For example, there were recently people with placards in London calling for the death of JK Rowling, which is de facto allowed by the police.
In comparison the wrong social media post can carry a lengthy jail sentence. [2]
The difference is so noticeable, it is now called "two tier policing".
If someone perceives something you say as "hateful" they can report you to the police, who can record a "Non-crime hate incident" against your name. [3]
This can show up on enhanced job checks, affecting employment.
It's very similar to a Stasi file.
[1] https://policinginsight.com/feature/advertisement/social-med...
[2] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-punishment-of-lucy-c...
[3] https://www.slaterheelis.co.uk/articles/crime-category/non-c...
You put hateful in quotes but I do want to point out that this is the tweet from the thing you linked:
> Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f*** hotels full of the bastards for all I care …. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it
The context also needs to be noted. This was part of the social media storm that whipped up a wave of right-wing, racist hatred and violence in the wake of the Southport riots. No such waves of violence have sprung out of trans activism.
There is no "far right" or people being "whipped up". Disorder is a consequence of failed government policy.
E.g. from 2023: "Northern seaside town now a 'powder keg' over asylum seeker tensions"
"The tension in Skegness has grown after hundreds of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Albania were crammed into former tourist hotels on the seafront."
"Cars have been vandalised, shop windows broken, mattresses set alight and scuffles reported between migrants and security staff. Officials say 229 asylum seekers are staying in up to seven hotels on and around the town’s promenade, but locals say the figure is more like 700."
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You mean in the wake of the Southport child murder mass stabbing, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Southport_stabbings
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That certainly doesn't meet the threshold for a credible threat.
It's a despicable thing to say, and it seems like even she realized that when she calmed down and deleted it. But what's the basis for treating it as a crime?
From OP's post, it wasn't treated as a crime. I would absolutely expect a background check to reveal statements like that, that people voluntarily, publicly post.
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It wasn’t prosecuted as a death threat, so it’s not really relevant whether or not the threat was credible. The relevant offense is inciting racial hatred.
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> So people have been arrested for posting something online, even if nobody appears to have seen it, and they delete it shortly after.
The message you are quoting is now being propagated,which is unfortunate.
Most of the western world is moving to a risk based legal system and has a proportionaly measure build in.
If the message in question had a limited reach, then it should not lead to a conviction.
Just like we don't convict people who has inappropriate thoughts or write inappropriate things in their diary.
I'm not sharing the message because it brings me joy to have it shown to more people. I think it's a pretty reprehensible thing to say. I'm sure people say worse into their personal diary or even among friends and that is not criminalized. I might possibly even consider the defense of "oh nobody really reads my posts anyway and I deleted it quickly".
But I absolutely will not stand for trying to claim that the post was scare-quotes "hateful". It was hateful, full stop. This is not polite discourse that was unfairly marked as hate because of some political slant. It was clearly hate, even if wasn't seen by anyone, even if it got deleted.
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Unfortunately we are at the stage in the UK now where people do receive visits from the police to (and I use the exact language of the police here) "Check their thinking". This is a consequence of attempting to police speech which previously fell below the level of criminal activity, but now may have been elevated to a crime via volumes of new hate crime laws. Indeed society has now decayed here to such an extent that we have "non crime hate incidents" which still fall below the criminal threshold but warrant an investigation by the police.
> If the message in question had a limited reach, then it should not lead to a conviction.
her husband shares a prominent political position. Her reach and views way larger than her twitter following. By association alone she has authoritative voice.
If Melania Trump was tweeting about racist things, how quickly she deletes the tweet would not be the main issue to give a prominent example
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There was a CCC talk on the practices of the Stasi some years ago (I forget exactly which year).
What stayed with me from the talk was that they had shown recovered Stasi photos of a young man's home where he had a wall dedicated to American iconography.
The speaker stated that in the current era this would just be trivially collected from social media instead of needing to gain physical access to property.
Edit: It was 32C3 What Does Big Brother See While He Is Watching at appx the 40m mark.
Thanks for the pointer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS2oAOieECk
> Over the course of three years, I was able to research the archives left by East Germany's Stasi to look for visual memories of this notorious surveillance system and more recently I was invited to spend some weeks looking at the archive by the Czechoslovak StB. Illustrating with images I have found during my research, I would like to address the question why this material is still relevant – even 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The birthday party with Stasi members dressed up as the individuals they spy on is really brutal, the costumes themselves were likely confiscated from their victims. Stereotypically confirming that "German sense of humor is not a laughing matter". There is always a brutally cynical undertone in their jokes.
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You forgot to add a source for your claim that protestors called for the death of Rowling.
That isn't the part of the argument that needs a source - pretty much everyone who is anyone in the public sphere seems to have death threats made against them and threats of extreme violence are actually pretty common at protests. Guillotines at protests are a reasonably common fixture for example [0]. That is the reason the standard needs to be someone actually doing something before the police get involved - people say all sorts of threatening things in political contexts. It's pretty scary but it is better to tolerate it and let people get their emotions out into the open. They generally don't mean it.
[X] has has been subject to death threats at a protest is a pretty safe blind claim. Particularly for politicians, public figures, rich people, identifiable races and political groupings. Some yobbo will write something stupid on a placard and wave it around sooner or later.
[0] I searched for "guillotines at political protests" as a sanity check and straight away saw a "decapitate TERFs" placard. https://news.sky.com/story/scottish-politicians-and-jk-rowli...
Maybe so, but it's still important to callenge okeuro49's claims. Extremist takes like that give off an air of believability despite being unsubstantiated. Relying solely on the common sense of the readership leads to situations where extremist views simply drown out the rest. It should not be seen as acceptable to present a wilfully distorted view of the facts.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/22/trans-activists-...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14638683/Police-inv...
I haven't seen a single example of someone calling for death of JK Rowling specifically in any of those?
The only references to her I see is a sign saying "go shit on a pile of Harry Potter books" and people chanting "fuck JK Rowling".
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So Britain is not a liberal democracy anymore? Are you sure you aren't falling for some propaganda here? This just seems very unlikely.
If this were actually true Britain would be violating basic premises of what is considered justice in a liberal democracy. Policing someone based on whether the targets of their threats are politically acceptable is obviously not are tactics used in autocratic regimes. Loyalists e.g. in Russia are free to threaten the opposition however they like at worst getting a slap on the wrist. At the same time much less serious threats against the regime are harshly punished.
If what you say were true and not just some propaganda operation, then the British political system has slid sharply towards authoritarianism. Obviously liberal democracy is more than equality before the law, but is one important pillar. This happening is incompatible with my view of the UK.
There's no doubt that the part about the police investigating and recording non-criminal speech is true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-crime_hate_incident
And according to these solicitors, such records are used in background checks:
https://www.slaterheelis.co.uk/articles/crime-category/non-c...
If you think an enhanced dbs check can affect your job wait to see what posting on social media will do.
I must admit I'm struggling to see the problem. If someone is hostile or prejudiced against people of a certain race, sexual orientation or disability then they should be excluded from jobs working with those people.
No, you see I can be hateful and not suffer consequences or else 1984. Also I should be allowed to vote and promote ideas that will actively harm people, gleefully admit it, and celebrating their suffering but it is not ok to stop me. As the famous poem goes first they came for the neo nazis and i did nothing, then they came from the online racists and i did nothing and now they are coming for me the lowly bigot and there is no one left to defend me.
Or something like that, I barely read anything that isnt a tweet length and preferably full of slurs.
(Trying to write a modern "modest proposal" is hard when reality is so blatantly stupid)
The problem here is that I could go to the police, report Tony Edgecombe as he told me at the coffee machine that devs who use 4 spaces instead of tabs are pure human scum who should be deported, and it will be written in your file. You then have no way to erase it.
The problem with thinking that such practice is totally ok, is that one day it will turn against you. Pro-Palestine liberals discovered this at their expense after the Trump election and the recent crackdown on their movement.
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Censoring of messengers can destroy early warning signals of systemic risks.
That’s the point, eh?
This case sounds crazy, I cannot even imagine loosing a child and how anybody could expect someone to keep sane in those conditions.
Beyond this, there is a very clear difference between inciting hatred towards a group of people based on race, religion, nationality, origin, etc, and towards a single individual without those aggravations. The law is quite clear about this distinction in various countries (Public Order Act in the UK for instance), and the penalties are rightfully much stronger when one would try to instil hatred towards a racial (or other) group.
There's not actually.
Sometimes there is a worthwhile discussion on the reach and breath of policing, sometimes ridiculous people with insane views and 0 technical or legislative knowledge make opinion eds for people to share as rage bait.
Please just look at the other content from the "lovely" Laurie Wastell of the spectator to find the kind of groups, opinions and places she wants to protect vs those she doesn't.
like I would be kinda embarrased to share news sources from people being actively sued for the harm they caused with their misinformation (in their case vaccine lies).
> If someone perceives something you say as "hateful" they can report you to the police, who can record a "Non-crime hate incident" against your name. [3]
this was a law introudced by a conservative goverment, as part of their increase in police tools, which in large part came from support for "anti woke" policing of the pro black protests that came after it erupted in america.
People like the previouslike mentioned Mrs Wastell advocated for stronger sentencing and more police, and now that the leopards are eating the faces of the people who spend all day on facebook sending death threats to muslims she is now so incredibly offended.
Btw another reason for the focus on the NCHI is because the police are swamped, the Conservatives under theresa may cut their budget 40% which meant they have way less people so to keep stats up, you gotta focus on the easy shit.
Maybe if we hadn't brought in consulting types who advocate for stats to show work progress, conservative cuts to salaries and advocated for "blue lives matter" which pushed for stronger sentencing laws we would not be here but somehow Mrs Whitehall and you will take 0 accountability and instead blame "woke judges" or some other nonsense as she does in her article.
If you really believe that your fellow citizens can be easily influenced to undertake extreme actions by a twitter post, why not end democracy altogether? Since citizens are seemingly perpetual minors who lack agency over their actions. This is why all authoritarian regimes absolutely love hate speech laws.
> If you really believe that your fellow citizens can be easily influenced to undertake extreme actions by a twitter post
so words have no capability of influencing people? Why speak at all if it can never change anyones opinion?
See what happens when you do reduction to absurdity of any argument?
But seriously, ask yourself: Is the entire ad industry a sham? Are state actors like the kremlin troll farms, the chinese fake newspapers and the cia meme department all wrong and no one can ever be influenced because they are adults and rational actors all the time? Are objectively effective misinformation campaigns like Brexit not proof of succesful compelling speech through channels like cambridge Analytica?
> why not end democracy altogether?
democracy is about empowering people. Leaving people to construct an identity through heaps of misinformation is not democracy, its insane and it cannot work.
> Since citizens are seemingly perpetual minors who lack agency over their actions.
Someone spending billions of dollars in anti intellectualism propaganda, political smear campaigns and capturing media networks is not the fault of the individual citizens, they are not minors they are victims of targetted hostile information hazards.
> This is why all authoritarian regimes absolutely love hate speech laws.
Authoritarian regimes tend to brag about how free their speech is. America spent the 50s chest bumping while sending people to jail over "communist ties" under mccarthyism, they spent the 60s bragging about free speech while sending students to jail for complaining about vietnam, they spent the early 2000s talking about free speech while punishing allies who did not agree with Irak (like France) and sending people to black sites like Guantanamo. And now they brag about free speech while the sitting president Elon decides which individual words get flagged in his social network and the vice president Trump jails 3 different judges over their rulings
you know all that free speech
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UK has a two-tier justice system.
In fairness to UK, pretty much every place has a two tier justice system.
That absolutely puts no fairness to the UK, but puts all these other places at equal shame.
It didn't used to have:
The hanging judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horse-hair wig,whom nothing short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no circumstances take a money bribe, is one of the symbolic figures of England.
- Orwell
The dose makes the poison, and the UK is getting a big dose right now that they are not used to.
Plus the normal status quo is that you have an elite you cannot offend, now there are protected classes you cannot offend.
@ZeroGravitas bitten by Poe's law :(
[flagged]
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> The difference is so noticeable, it is now called "two tier policing".
That’s what Elon Musk calls it. In fact, the difference in the case you mention is simply that:
(i) Inciting racial hatred is a specific offense which doesn’t require a credible death threat. There is no offense of inciting hatred against TERFs. Like that or don’t – but the police don’t make the laws.
(ii) The context of Connolly posting during the riots in which actual violent crimes against minority groups were being committed.
That's disturbing. Instead of the govt. going after people we should enable people going after people.
That's how it's done in real life and that's how we protect ourselves from arsholes in real life. That's why the police is only involved when some actual danger is present, you are not expected to just endure the constant harassment.
IMHO someone being a complete cunt and you not having a recourse is also not acceptable. It's terrorizing people, there must be a mechanism to stop these people and that mechanism should not be police intervention.
The things they do should somehow stick to their name for example or you should be able to go after them just as brutally. Honestly, I like 4Chans way with dealing with people much more than restricted, moderated police involved crap that the Web has become. Someone built a following, then they harass people but your only recourse is legal stuff and you can't do doxxing, can't use bad words etc because you get banned/demoted/shadowbanned/rate-limited. It's not working, it's destroying the society.
For example, the women jailed for just tweeting plead guilt that she was spreading materials with intention to stir racial hatred. In a real life such person will be quickly stopped one way or another, she will be confronted and then removed or ignored. If her material is actually good, it will be noted and supported and the issue resolved. Online is not like that people with agenda lie, spam and annoy people without facing a pushback or consequences. It's not a real discussion, it's not real problem solving.
Just wait until you see the difference in how the police treat someone between defending yourself and attacking someone in the UK. Note: Don’t try to defend yourself if you know what’s good for you.
The police is not always present and you don't have to attack anybody. For most cases it is good enough to be able to show credible defence. If you you are able to smack someone, they will get smacked if they insist and remember it even if afterwards you go through legal trouble(they will also get into legal trouble). Police and the courts cant un-smack them. As a result, people feeling causing trouble tread more carefully and don't cross a line unless they are fully motivated to go through all this.
Streets are significantly more polite than the online places and I think its because of the dynamic of it and not the people - they are the same people.
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