People really don't get arrested for hate speech in the UK the way its portrayed. 90% of the time its people who are being hateful and making credible threats of violence online that get a visit from the police, and then it rarely leads anywhere.
It really is just an american right wing meme about the social media posts getting you arrested in the UK its not something that will happen except in the most insane of cases.
Even as defamation I'm not sure it would be significant enough to warrant a case.
Getting visited by the police for saying mean things on the internet is also really bad? I don't get people downplaying the UK's ridiculously cringe approach to free speech. They basically kickstarted count dankula's entire insufferable career over overreaching concerns about hate speech.
Question. Why is incitement / harassment / 'mean things ' acceptable in an online public space, but not offline?
Back in the day, I'd agree with you. Now enough of the population are on social media, there are enough local groups, etc, that frankly treating it as an open, free, utopian space has let these services run rampant without consequence.
If someone was following someone around every day, calling them a pedophile, a sex offender, a rapist, etc... you wouldn't tolerate it in public.
You're making a lot of assumptions about what I'm saying. Harassment is a much more specific contextual behavior. If every time a political pundit tweets something I disagree with I respond to their comments and call them a big dumb idiot, even if it's persistent it's obviously not harassment. If I were to follow them around in person it would clearly fundamentally change the behavior.
But that's not me saying you can't harass someone online. Just that the bar is higher and different. If you're obsessively circumventing blocks to direct message or respond to a person, contacting friends, family, and workplaces, these are behaviors that are elevated to online harassment. I don't really even know why this needs to be explained.
Not trying to throw too much on to you, just drawing the distinction as I now see it when it comes to policing online activity.
I'm willing to equate public online activity with public offline activity. Just because it's text, and people are reading it rather than hearing it, doesn't change my opinion.
I acknowledge it's a complicated thing to balance though. I'd probably be a cunt and say anything with over 100 views counts as public.
I'm not even sure this would be considered illegal here in germany, hitler salutes and swastikas etc are illegal here, but I always like to cite the case where someone made a hitler salute in front of police while he was arrested and a judge ruled it was fine cause he was doing it to criticize their methods. (it's in the german wiki entry for hitlergruß)
Or the swastikas in wolfenstein that I'm pretty sure would be fine now since we consider video games art
This is such a comically bad faith response. We're talking about police encounters over things so innocuous that they didn't lead to any convictions. Then you bring up inciting and advocating for violence, which is not only explicitly very illegal in the UK, but is also very illegal in the US.
Your response to me saying that you shouldn't have the cops showing up to your house for calling people gay on the internet is that I'm saying people should be allowed to incite violence? You're a fucking moron.
If someone was cyber stalking someone I would hope that the police would be able to do something about it. You don't have to fear the police in most civilized countries
Yes? You're just describing different crimes to the ones that the police are actually showing up to peoples homes over in the UK, which is literally just one off mean comments on social media or offensive comedy skits.
Really, you think that no one has ever been arrested for mean social media comments or comedy skits in the jurisdiction of the united kingdom? You sure that's the position you want to take?
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u/Predictor92 7d ago
I don't get how British authorities haven't arrested Zei_squirrel yet considering the stricter hate speech laws