Comment by cpursley
15 hours ago
With all the issues in the US and generally wrong direction, I can’t remember them ever arresting people for mean tweets in the way that Germany and the UK have. They all seem to be running full speed towards a surveillance state.
> With all the issues in the US and generally wrong direction, I can’t remember them ever arresting people for mean tweets in the way that Germany and the UK have.
Then you haven't been paying attention. The constitution prevents citizens from being convicted, but that doesn't stop arrests or being turned away at the border (even for permanent residents who've lived in the US for decades), and US citizens don't seem to care, so it's cold comfort for many of us.
>and US citizens don't seem to care
I think maybe you haven't been paying attention.
Most of us do care. Trump's approval rating is pretty low at 36%, and his disapproval rating is high. Just because he's still causing chaos doesn't mean the majority of us don't care about it. There's just no legal way to remove him, and his cronies simply won't do it - there's not enough votes in congress or he would have been gone after his first or second impeachment.
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/20/nx-s1-5861764/trumps-job-appr...
I understand your point, however I don’t buy „there's just no legal way to remove him“. With so low ratings where are the daily protests against such type of government? Surely, nationwide daily protests would make elected officials reconsider their positions, given an upcoming midterm election, while there still is one.
Don’t get me wrong, I know the thousands reasons why you won’t join a protest, I’m „guilty“ myself. I just want to argue against your argument that I quoted because this puts all of us in an unhelpful victim mentality.
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This isn't about Trump. No 4th amendment rights at the border has been an issue for at least 20 years, but US citizens don't care because it doesn't affect citizens.
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A 36% approval rating is sky-high for a president that started a pointless immensely costly war after getting elected on a platform of "no more costly wars" and is in the process of negotiating an immensely unfavorable deal with Iran after getting elected on a platform of "Obama's deal with Iran was terrible, I could do much better".
By contrast, Biden at the same point in his term was hovering around 39%, for the heinous crime of... rebuilding the US economy? Including some woke riders in his infrastructure bill?
At this point, a fair assessment of US citizens is that on average, they seem to consider that being a right-wing autocrat wannabe, threatening to invade allied countries "as a negotiating tactic", being a climate change denier, starting a humiliating failed war, trying to blackmail the press into compliance, etc, are about 3% worse than being a cringe center-left bureaucrat.
"US citizens don't seem to care" is an apt hyperbole.
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NPR as your source isn't exactly a compelling argument tbh
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You are talking about something different (in bad faith). Please share a single instance of a US citizen being arrested for an offensive social media post.
A 30 second search found me https://www.fire.org/news/he-spent-37-days-jail-facebook-pos... . You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride. (And you're pretty thoroughly proving my point about US citizens not caring about anyone else)
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The US has arrested many people for speech, and even made charges stick many time. A famous historical example is charging Eugene Debs (and many others) with sedition for opposing WWI and the draft. There was at least one case of being arrested for political social media posts, already linked in adjacent threads. Threats of violence or even sufficiently harsh language to cause fear-for-life can be a crime. "Revenge porn" and deepfakes have had laws passed curtailing them and prosecutions made. The US is certainly less restrictive of speech than other countries, but you're nowhere near entirely free to say or post anything you want.
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The posts don't even need to be offensive, just uncomfortable:
https://www.fox4news.com/news/woman-arrested-facebook-post-c...
https://youtu.be/tB3WVygAM8I
Why does it need to be a US citizen? Is mistreatment okay if they're not a citizen? That clause reads extremely chauvinist to me.
A few people being stopped to check if their residency is valid is more than fine considering the last admin flooded the country with 20mil migrants with its open border policy
[x] Doesn’t know UK not in EU [x] Thinks people inciting violence online a free speech -issue [x] Calls Germany a surveillance state when US uses Palantir - a US company - to openly spy on its citizens
X seems to work great. Inciting men in with gambling, porn, crypto, ai and other broistan staples, then feeding them far-right nonsense info points.
I can immediately tell you're not arguing in "good faith" when you resort to "mean tweets".
The numbers commonly being reporting include stalkers, criminals, etc.
You don't get arrested for being politically incorrect in the UK. You get arrested for posting something threatening, harassing, inciteful, or grossly indecent. Also, being arrested and being charged are two completely separate things.
By "mean tweets" I assume you mean death threats? How about not threatening to kill someone on social media, is that so hard to do?
They literally arrested people for quoting Charlie Kirk in tweets after his death.
Source? Or are you another "trust me bro" Redditor.
One guy spent 37 days in jail for re-posting a thing trump said ("We have to get over it" in reference to a school shooting), after Charlie Kirk was killed.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7pyjxjxrvo
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Yes, the US doesn't arrest people for death threats on Twitter, it's too busy actually killing those that oppose ICE.
I know of many examples from the US and none from Germany and the UK. If they're truly so plentiful, please enlighten me with a link or two of the latter.
That’s not the EU.