Comment by direwolf20
16 days ago
Like the UK, where you can tweet that someone should burn down a hotel full of migrants, and you can be arrested for tweeting that.
Or like Russia, where you can tweet that you don't like the president, and you can be arrested for tweeting that?
> someone should burn down a hotel full of migrants
> you don't like the president
One of these things is not like the other. In the second case, it's expressing disagreement with a political figure that has directed multiple mass murders of vulnerable people.
But in the first, it's promoting the mass murder of vulnerable people. Free speech isn't freedom to promote hate crimes.
> Like the UK, where you can tweet that someone should burn down a hotel full of migrants, and you can be arrested for tweeting that.
During the middle of a riot where people were actively trying to set fire to a hotel full of migrants.
Do you think someone should be arrested for encouraging the burning down of a hotel full of people in real life? If so, why should it be different online? If not, well then you have more serious problems.
I do, but a lot of people don't think it should be possible for the government to track down the person who tweeted let's burn down the migrants hotel.
Does not having government-controlled cameras in our apartments make it impossible for police to prosecute wife-beaters? Can police do some actual work to catch "bad people" as opposed to making internet a panopticon?
I don't think that's a goal, but as a side effect of truly respecting privacy, I'm fine with that.
Do you have someone announce you when entering somewhere in real life, and if not why should it be any different online?
Like both, of course!
When you build a panopticon for some group you perceive as "good guys" to use keep in mind that eventually it will be controlled by "bad guys".
The burn down a hotel thing wasn't about panopticons - Lucy Connolly posted publicly with her own name and photo. (https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRestIsPolitics/comments/1lvrepk/...)
The sentence was probably excessive though.
UK also apparently arrest people for posting videos of zieg heiling dogs and other such nonsense. Which is exactly my point - once the instruments to track and de-anonymize people online are set up, they eventually will be used for all kinds of purposes.
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Look up how people were prosecuted in the US during the 1950s and onwards for having "communist sympathies" or being against racism.