101–110 of 443 posts
This is nothing compared to what people tweeted the day after Margaret Thatcher died. You absolutely should not be prosecuted for that.
This is part of why we have the first amendment. People should be allowed to express their opinions even if they're "grossly offensive".
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If you are in favour of limits on speech then you should not have a problem with this. Everything is offensive to someone. We should all go to prison!
Almost literally every person is "in favour of limits on speech" to some extent, so this kind of reductionism contributes nothing (and I'd argue generally makes the signal-to-noise ratio even worse). There are huge numbers of interesting questions around how we treat freedom of speech in a civilised society. What restrictions can we collectively accept? How do we ensure that individual rights to speech are protected?…
I'd like to add that most posters here on HN are arguing conditional on living in a Western democracy. And most Western democracies have set different restrictions - but all do have some restrictions. E.g. it's illegal to deny the holocaust in Germany.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
White working class boys in the UK are amongst the least likely to go to university in the UK, they don't have a privilege for being white. I think terms like white privilege drive resentment and are divisive. "In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race..." Barack Obama. htt…
they don't have a privilege for being white. As a white (and formerly working class) boy from the UK, I can confidently say that nobody has at any point in my life discriminated against me on the basis of my ethnic background. That is the extent of what this expression means – it does not mean that any individual to whom it applied is in a superior position relative to others, but only that they do not suffer from di…
It's a fundamentally bad phase to use.
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No, he wasn't. It's offensive, but the figure of speech "the only good ... is a dead ..." does not call for murder. And offending soldiers is not a hate-crime, AFAIK. The tweeter should have been made to pay a fine to the charity Captain Tom was endorsing.
"burn auld fella" sounds like a call to action to me.
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) a…
I think racist comments, for example, would already be covered under the Public Order Act 1986
(1) A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if—
(a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
(b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.
(2) An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the written material is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and are not heard or seen except by other persons in that or another dwelling.
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However, it looks as though you might get away with saying some very nasty racist things in public if you were careful with your vocabulary, tone of voice and so on.
Is there any protection for people with Tourette's or mentally ill people, I wonder?
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>>"I don’t think you should be able to tweet racist messages for example. " Why not,and who gets to make the determination? I'm an atheist, and having so many blasphemy and religion protection laws in liberal democracies misused (or rather, used exactly as they are truly intended) so horribly has really taught me what poorly defined restrictions on speech mean in the real world. As for racist speech, I really truly b…
> As for racist speech, I really truly believe that censoring does not ever serve its intended purpose. What is censoring for you? I don't see a single Western democracy that is not "censoring" or restricting the rights of individuals to some extent. It's just to a different extent. E.g. the US has speed limits on highways, but Germany hasn't. You must not deny the holocaust in Germany, but you can do so in the US. T…
I agree with grayness, I just happen to draw my line fairly, for lack of better word, liberally - and specifically so that we Can, to your point, discuss ideas productively as a society - something that censorship explicitly and by definition prevents! I am a proponent of marketplace of ideas and open discussion.
To your example, I do not see German laws making denial of holocaust as even remotely effective. I believe they are in fact counter productive - I've met people who use them to confirm the notion of "Jewish conspiracy". I do not agree with these people! But I'd rather have them spew their nonsense in the open, and be able to freely tell them they're wrong, unhindered by naive and ineffective at best attempts at censorship.
(speed driving laws are not censorship in any way that I've seen the word defined. Not every law is censorship, not every action is speech/communication).
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) a…
>>"I don’t think you should be able to tweet racist messages for example. " Why not,and who gets to make the determination? I'm an atheist, and having so many blasphemy and religion protection laws in liberal democracies misused (or rather, used exactly as they are truly intended) so horribly has really taught me what poorly defined restrictions on speech mean in the real world. As for racist speech, I really truly b…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the UK brought in laws around lockdowns and handling covid people here were complaining that it was a slippery slope and the government would never give up those restrictions yet they did exactly that and those laws are no longer in play. In that case the slippery slope argument was a fallacy.
We've established - quite clearly - that in an emergency the government can lock everything down for 2 years and that lip service to liberty or human rights means nothing. Emergencies happen every 2-3 years. Why won't we see similar anti-liberty measures again in the next 20 years? 'We' 'know' it 'works'. It isn't even clear that we'll be spared another pandemic through that timeframe, the world is quite small these…
They expired on 25th March 2022 barring a small number of administrative issues which have been extended.