Comment by okeuro49
3 hours ago
In the UK 30 people are arrested a day for social media posts online. Only about 10 percent resulting in convictions.
Police don't face criminal charges for this.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...
Who cares? That's a different country with a different legal system and a different constitution (an unwritten one, among other things).
US's Bill of Rights is very important.
But nevertheless, I can affirm that in the US, law enforcement will never face consequences for any misconduct. They kill people for no reason with impunity all the time, as we have all seen.
Who cares? Well the grand parent post references Europe, it is presumably a response to that.
"most European legal systems" implies more than one system, they're most likely referring to the "European Union" and not the geographical continent of Europe, which the UK is not a part of anymore
The UK is famously no longer a part of the EU.
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That's completely wrong. The US legal system drew heavily from the British system, particularly any of the common law pieces (much of tort law, IIRC).
Note that the quoted laws also cover things that would be restraining or harassment orders in the USA.
The laws sure, they may be considered similar to US ones, the problem with EU and especially UK speech laws is the way they're interpreted and applied by the justice system, in way more draconical and abusive ways than in the US.
For example a UK comedian got arrested for posting a photo he took outside his balcony of a large congregation of citizens of brown skinned complexion from the Indian subcontinent captioned "imagine the smell".
Someone below said it well: "This is the problem with going after 'harmful communication'. It is not something that can be defined precisely, which allows government officials to choose to interpret it in whatever way they want when the enforce it."
So this type draconical speech laws is that it always leads to selective enforcement, it's never an objective two-way street affecting everyone equally, effectively turning into a means for public intimidation(tyranny). One bad joke about one group sympathetic to the government politics can be considered "hate speech" and land you in prison, while the same joke about the groups the government dislikes is just "free speech".
Similarly in Germany if you were to call Merz a corrupt traitor online you'd get visited by the police, but if you were to call a German right wing politician a nazi bitch, then it's just free speech. Hate speech enforcement always ends up a one way street coming from the status quo in power.
What political leaders miss is that the status quo can always flip as history has proven time again, and then those laws they set in place to silence their critics, will then be used against them, and then they'll cry fowl.
No, that didn't happen. You're confusing two different events together.
The guy who posted the photo of brown skinned people with the "imagine the smell" comment was American and lost his job. The UK wasn't involved in any way. [0]
The comedian you might be thinking of is Graham Linehan - he was arrested for inciting violence against trans people and has a long string of twitter posts quoted as possible reasons. (and had a similar post with the comment of "a photo you can smell" but with a photo of a trans rights protest, so perhaps the origin of the confusion?).
[0] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/indians-dogpile...
Those 30 aren’t arrested for just for writing “social media posts” but for possibly “harmful communication including incitement to terrorism and violence, online threats and abuse, and unwanted communication via email and other means”
Of the 90% many will accept their fault and receive a caution or warning
Edit: and none of those cases would involve pretrial remand/jail
Great summary here of the kind of things people are arrested for and a bit more about the laws this refers to https://open.substack.com/pub/monkdebunks/p/are-30-people-a-...
The vast majority of those arrested are just for mild insults, which are illegal under the censorious UK regime; not incitement to terrorism or threats.
I'm pretty sure it's threat of violence. Sure, in some of the cases, the threats are mild ('i will fuck you up'), but they are often repeated, which, to be clear, should be considered harassment in any case (and the fact that it still isn't in other countries is wild. Someone keeps sending me insults, I should be able to legally retaliate to make him stop, no?)
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Not UK but in Germany you can face criminal prosecution for insulting the chancellor,
https://x.com/Pirat_Nation/status/2056692341399081235
While here in the UK you can be arrested and charged for saying mean things about the royal family on private whatsapp groups,
https://www.itv.com/news/london/2023-09-07/five-former-met-p...
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> possibly “harmful communication including incitement to terrorism and violence, online threats and abuse, and unwanted communication via email and other means”
That's a lot of colorful language to say "words hurt".
I could point you to 30 BlueSky posts that would qualify.... posted in the last 5 minutes.
>Of the 90% many will accept their fault and receive a caution or warning
Why do you need to arrest someone just to warn them?
In the UK the police can detain you for up to 24hrs without a judge and extend it to 36hrs in some cases.
One case I read of a guy who got in trouble for a social media post, he was called into the station and they basically forced him to sign a paper otherwise he couldn't leave as they'd just keep interrogating him, where I'd imagine they threatened to get the courts involved unless he admitted he was wrong for doing it. Which is why most of them don't end up as convictions.
It's basically a very aggressive warning.
Example: https://www.aol.com/police-apologise-arresting-former-specia...
> Mr Foulkes was detained in a police cell for eight hours and questioned in relation to a potential charge of malicious communications. He said he ended up accepting an unconditional caution because he feared the investigation could affect his visits to his daughter in Australia.
Another https://www.foxnews.com/world/blogger-arrested-sharing-anti-...
> After being questioned for several hours, North was released without charge.
I mean, this is exactly what the Tennessee sheriff accused this guy of doing. The Sheriff said that a meme referencing Trump saying that people 'needed to get over' a school shooting was actually a threat against the school.
This is the problem with going after 'harmful communication'. It is not something that can be defined precisely, which allows government officials to choose to interpret it in whatever way they want when the enforce it. Obviously in these cases, the courts ruled against the official's interpretation, but that didn't stop this guy from having to spend 37 days in jail before they released him.
As they say "you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride".
While it is good that the UK version doesn't send you to pretrial jail, you still have to fight the charge. You have to respond, spend time in court, hire council, and hope you can convince the courts that your post doesn't fit the definition of incitement to violence.
This has a chilling effect on free speech, even if all the cases are eventually thrown out. This is a tactic the Trump administration has used repeatedly. Go after people in court for things that are clearly not illegal. You make the person fight the charges, both in court and in the public eye, and then the cases are dismissed eventually and the administration moves on. All it does is make people factor this in when deciding how to act; is my act of protest worth having to fight this in court?
And harmful communication can be "Fuck Hamas" which may be hateful, but not harmful.
Excuse the whataboutism, but how many Americans are arrested for “disorderly conduct” each day? (Which from my YouTube police footage watching appears to be “being an annoying arsehole in public” [1] ie a broadly similar moral misbehaviour)
> [1] An overt act or conduct in public (or affecting the public) that disturbs the peace, safety, morals, or order (e.g., fighting, making unreasonable noise, using obscene/abusive language or gestures, obstructing traffic, creating hazardous/physically offensive conditions, refusing to disperse).
Our online laws which Americans often seem to view entirely through the lens of free speech are more about public (dis)order. It’s not ideas that are being censored, it’s personal conduct online which may be harassing, threatening, abusive or may create a breach of the peace.
Similar in the UK, and there has been along history of the police misusing things such as "causing an obstruction" here
I find it ironic; George Orwell was English!
The UK has different speech laws than the United States. Presumably, the actions of the police making those arrests are within the scope of UK law. Even if 90% don't result in a conviction, the police may still be operating within the scope of their authority in those arrests.
[flagged]
Linehan was arrested for making this post:
> If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls
This seems like a straightforward call to violence to me. And he was released after police ascertained that he had no intent to act on these statements.
If someone made posts along the lines of "Christians are abusive, punch them" would it be surprising if CBP took them aside for further questioning?
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The suggestion that the actions within UK happen everywhere in Europe is just as misleading.
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UK voted not to be a part of Europe. Well, at least the England part of the UK did.
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What are these messages? Threatening your ex-wife? Plotting to commit arson? Or saying you don't like immigrants? They all fall under this umbrella, yet the vast majority of people would agree the first two are criminal in nature.
That’s not Europe. They had a whole vote about it and everything!
Telegram creator arrested for the crimes of his users on his platform. He did not commit any of these crimes, he's being held as complicit, when every other social media giant is not being held to this standard, and its ridiculous to hold most platforms like this liable, unless it's the only thing they host.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_indictment_of_Pavel...
Europe is a continent which the UK is a part of.
It was a joke about Brexit. A joke about a joke, if you will.
this is false
It is similar in Germany, where you can be arrested for simply posting an insult (non-violent) to a politician. No police will face charges if you aren't convicted. And you will NEVER get a settlement.
I don't know why HN has become full of authoritarian anti-free-speech apologists. The current political divisions are turning people insane.
The UK doesn’t have free speech