Comment by tossandthrow
8 hours ago
> 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.
Hate is a normal thing in human societies. Freedom of speech also encompasses expressing hatred and negative feelings. What you can do to mitigate it is to solve the problems that create hate. In the case of the UK, addressing the mass-rapes of British girls, among other things.
Sending people to prison for social media posts is a typical totalitarian move, similar to what you find in China, North Korea or Russia. None of the underlying issues are solved by intimidating your population, who, at some point, will just start to leave quietly.
Lots of countries outlaw hate speech. I know that Americans tend to think that this is a slippery slope to totalitarianism, but much of the rest of the world disagrees. And America in its present state isn't a great advertisment for its own particular model of public discourse and political freedom.
Obviously, you can also be jailed in the US for social media posts that break the law. Here is one example:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/social-media-influencer...
I am not trying to say that it was not hateful - and proper moderation should be in place. Just like it has always been.
I am merely trying to say that there should be proportion in the reaction.
The society does not give you a death sentence to jay walk.
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
If Melania posts some distasteful ideas, she won't go to prison since US citizens have freedom of speech, unlike in the UK and their Orwellian laws.
> US citizens have freedom of speech
just a reminder that anti protest laws now allow people to be send to prision for speech. But I guess as long as hippie looking they/them who are pro palestine at uni go to jail instead of racist white people then the US does not have Orwellian laws.
Please never actually read the book or else you might need to stop using it as a adjective because doublethink is what you are actively doing right now
9 replies →
Melania Trump literally did spread racist lies on national TV. And when confronted with evidence that directly contradicted her racist lies that she could not refute, she justified her racist lies with her racist "feelings".
Melania Trump Supported Her Husband's Racist Birtherism Claims on TV:
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/melania-trump-supported-her-...
>People need to stop talking about "freeing Melania."
>An old clip resurfaced on the internet over the weekend of Melania Trump supporting her husband Donald Trump's claims that former president Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S.
>On April 20, 2011, Melania appeared on the Joy Behar Show and backed up her husband's allegations that Obama wasn't born in the state of Hawaii like live birth records suggest.
>"It’s not only Donald who wants to see [Obama's birth certificate], it’s American people who voted for him and who didn’t vote for him. They want to see that," she argued. Behar then made the point that the birth certificate had already been on display and all over the internet. "We feel it’s different than birth certificate," Melania responded.
Melania Trump On Obama's Birth Certificate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6i0YlHriKk&t=98s
>Joy asks Melania Trump if Donald is really going to run for president or if it's a publicity stunt & why he's obsessed with President Obama's birth certificate.