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Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK

theverge.com

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Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK

#11

Post by [deleted] »

gmac wrote: post #5
hunglee2 wrote: post #2

Interesting case: drunken tweet to a small follower count, deleted after 20 minutes, leading to prosecution and conviction. The Online Safety Bill which is due to be passed, with further empower institutions to police 'harmful messages'. I guess ideological conformity is a good thing for stable society?

I assume your question is ironic. This case looks like an appalling over-reaction by an increasingly authoritarian state.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK

#12

Post by dazc »

cm2187 wrote: post #6
hunglee2 wrote: post #2

Interesting case: drunken tweet to a small follower count, deleted after 20 minutes, leading to prosecution and conviction. The Online Safety Bill which is due to be passed, with further empower institutions to police 'harmful messages'. I guess ideological conformity is a good thing for stable society?

It’s also disturbing that the police complains it is not given the means to combat knife crime but thinks it is a good use of their resource to police politeness on twitter.

The police like to chase easy targets and social media offers up lots of opportunities to prove how well they are doing their job.

The only people who are scared of the police in the UK are middle class, normally law abiding citizens. One minor slip-up and they will be on you like a ton of bricks.

Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK

#13

Post by basisword »

I’m generally in favour of some limits on speech. I don’t think you should be able to tweet racist messages for example. It’s obviously very complicated and something people are going to argue a lot about. BUT this case has made me change my opinion. Things much worse than this are tweeted every day and this is the one that gets prosecuted. It’s blatantly politically motivated (‘national hero’, British soldier etc) and in terms of awful things people tweet…it’s not actually that bad. Suddenly I find myself agreeing with the people arguing these restrictions are a slippery slope.

Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK

#16

Post by jackweirdy »

The history of this law dates back to 1935, when it was designed to protect post office staff who ran telephone switchboards from being harassed by the public, and it that context, it makes sense. Of course in 21st century the law doesn't make sense as it isn't humans transmitting our messages any more

Some legal commentary about its previous use: http://barristerblogger.com/2018/03/24/its-time-to-change-th...

While there is certainly a slippery slope argument about the validity of restrictions on speech, that is not how I see this - this is legislative debt, and an argument in favour of deleting deprecated laws

Re: Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK

#20

Post by tored »

cm2187 wrote: post #6
hunglee2 wrote: post #2

Interesting case: drunken tweet to a small follower count, deleted after 20 minutes, leading to prosecution and conviction. The Online Safety Bill which is due to be passed, with further empower institutions to police 'harmful messages'. I guess ideological conformity is a good thing for stable society?

It’s also disturbing that the police complains it is not given the means to combat knife crime but thinks it is a good use of their resource to police politeness on twitter.

What is typical for organization like police is that they prioritize things that gets the best statistics in a spreadsheet, not the best result for society.
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