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Twitter user sentenced to 150 hours of community service in UK

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

#381

Post by dane-pgp »

sofixa wrote: post #120
roenxi wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Emergencies happen every 2-3 years. The last time a pandemic of this scale happened was a century ago. True, with the destruction of animal habitats and climate change ( which feeds into the former), we'll probably see more epidemics from now on. And yes, the restrictions worked against that type of emergency - an airborne virus of pandemic proportions. It's a fallacy to claim that now that we know all that and the…

> with the destruction of animal habitats and climate change ( which feeds into the former), we'll probably see more epidemics from now on

Shouldn't the null hypothesis be that a lack of animal habitats means fewer animals and less chance of zoonotic diseases emerging? I know it's tempting to blame all the world's problems on climate change, but we need to be careful not to exaggerate things and give climate change denialists weak arguments to attack.

> Oh yes, QR codes surveillance.

You may not feel that these systems have been, or would ever be, used against you, but unfortunately people in other countries might not be so lucky[0][1], and bad uses of technology have a way of spreading internationally.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/02/cybergulag-rus...

[1] https://theconversation.com/chinas-surveillance-creep-how-bi...

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

#382

Post by dane-pgp »

jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #181
namelessoracle wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OK hand sign is racist now. There's rumbles of milk being racist. The scary thing that should terrify everyone is we are going to come to a point where being called racist no longer matters or nobody cares, and then your gonna see REAL racism come back with a fury and force you wont like.

Wait, milk?

Apparently? Here's an article titled "Milk, a symbol of neo-Nazi hate" published "August 31, 2017" (not April 1):

https://theconversation.com/milk-a-symbol-of-neo-nazi-hate-8...

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

#383

Post by throwawaylinux »

helloworld11 wrote: post #133
basisword wrote: post #13

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…

Aside from me absolutely being in favor of even offensive and racist speech out of general principles, you'd be surprised (or not) by how easily "racism" can be redefined to include all kinds of things that are very, very dubiously racist by any normal definition. There are extremely woke people who consider even questioning any of their arguments about race or class as a racist act. There are cases where a person ma…

I have been called a racist for voicing my opposition to efforts to repeal constitutional prohibitions against racism. These lunatics somehow make up definitions that absolve themselves of their racism and condemn the anti-racists.

These racist maniacs would absolutely have me censored and punished for my views, and their putrid racist ideology is infecting academia, entertainment, "news", politics, and even the law. So no you certainly can't rely on "reasonableness" or the social standard of the day to bound the limits of speech.

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

#385

Post by 0des »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #355
judahmeek wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as a fundamental human right to free expression. You would be better served by pointing out that governments tend to become more authoritarian over time & the harder citizens resist authoritarian creep, the longer they have before a bloody revolution is usually required.

I believe the use of the word fundamental here refers to the fact that free-speech underlies all other rights. If you don't have free speech then you don't really have any rights at all.

Right but the K doesn't have that, that's primarily a construct of USA.

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

#386

Post by autoexec »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #363
autoexec wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is that everyone has a certain amount of "privilege" due to their membership to a group and the complex dynamics that exist between groups. There is no person who doesn't have a list of advantages and disadvantages compared to others. Understanding that, and that your experience will not always be what everyone's experience has been is all you need. Men get harsher sentences than women for the same crimes, b…

> The fact is that everyone has a certain amount of "privilege" due to their membership to a group and the complex dynamics that exist between groups. There is no person who doesn't have a list of advantages and disadvantages compared to others. Understanding that, and that your experience will not always be what everyone's experience has been is all you need. It's really hard to get people to realize that, and to se…

>It's really hard to get people to realize that, and to see the different types of things they benefit from silently. Do you have better suggestions to get people to notice?

Much of the time it'll have to be hearing from other people and their experiences. Then you can kind of compare that with how things go for you. It's nice in a "count you blessings" kind of way to have a list of advantages you have, but it's not important. What matters is that people understand that differences exist so that when they hear about one person's problems they understand that their own experience isn't representative for everyone. Without that someone might hear someone with complaints against police (as an example) and think back over their own long history of pleasant/helpful interactions with officers and dismiss the other person's complaints as overblown or even made up. We see the same problem with A/B testing. Some user complaints about something in a tweet or forum and other people dismiss them because their experience is different and they don't realize what they see isn't universal.

> I think the word privilege is useful to point out when one group has a huge advantage over another, even when there are some advantages or 'advantages' going in either direction.

Why is it useful? Won't it be more useful and productive to point out when a group has a huge disadvantage compared to another? That's something you can fix. If you are told, that simply because of where you were born and the color of your skin X Y and Z are going to be easier for you that isn't useful. You didn't cause that situation, you can't change where you were born or your skin color, and you probably don't want to make anything worse for yourself even if you could. If you tell someone instead that other people with a different skin color are unfairly treated in X Y and Z that's something people can and will want to change.

> It's not really an assumption that if you're white you face a tiny fraction of the racism that a black person gets

The problem is that it 100% is. An old white man accused of being "privileged" might be a holocaust survivor or come from a country or community where they've faced racism their whole lives. Maybe it wasn't even racism explicitly. The point is that you can't know what struggles a person has had to deal with and when people have suffered the last thing they want is someone telling them how great and easy their lives have been.

If you're going to make an assumption it should be that every person has had struggles and advantages at various points in their lives. What matters is that we identify areas of inequality and correct them to reduce all people's struggles. When you do that you aren't asking anyone to feel bad about how good they've had things, you're just asking them to help bring everyone up to the same place. Guilt. blame, defensiveness... those things aren't inevitable. It's all about framing the discussion constructively around the problem to be solved and not the people who, entirely by chance, don't have that particular struggle.

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

#387

Post by baryphonic »

> The deterrence is really to show people that despite the steps you took to try and recall matters, as soon as you press the blue button that’s it. It’s important for other people to realise how quickly things can get out of control. You are a good example of that, not having many followers.

I'm genuinely confused by what "get out of control" means. Violence? SWATing? Other people on the Internet may get mad?

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

#388

Post by bennysomething »

teawrecks wrote: post #337
standardUser wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire concept of "setting an example" seems like a bit of fascism that has snuck its way into liberal democracy.

IANAL but it seems like "setting an example" is synonymous with "setting a precedent", which is a concept that seems fundamental to any legal system, even for civil cases. Companies press charges against every slight infringement on their trademarks because if they don't, they're implicitly setting a precedent that the behavior is ok. If you aren't actively setting precedents, then legally it's the same as saying, "w…

The problem I have with send a message style justice is that it means the person is being treated as an individual they are being used for some sort of societal manipulation. The aim of written law is to attempt to treat everyone the same before the law I think this undermines that concept.

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

#389

Post by minimilian »

minimilian wrote: post #171
zone411 wrote: post #163

In another UK case, a 19-year-old just got 6 weeks in jail for using a racist slur directed at a football (soccer) player in a tweet: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-60927111 .

What was the actual content of the tweet?

Is my downvoted & dead sister so because she is false or because she spoke an unspeakable truth? Surely this cannot be one of those places where mentioning an offensive word (as distinct from using it) is considered offensive? @dang

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

#390

Post by dekken_ »

dp-hackernews wrote: post #343
Traster wrote: post #208

There's something I find loathesome about this "Send a message" sentencing. What the judge has done is send a clear message, that he won't sentence you on the merits of the case but will sentence you to serve his own agenda. The only message this sends is that justice has failed. It's always completely transparent who exactly gets made an example of, and who gets off with a slap on the wrist. We'll spend months hunti…

"Remember, that not he who gives ill language or a blow insults, but the principle which represents these things as insulting. When, therefore, anyone provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you." ~ Epictetus, Enchiridion

Words can only hurt you if you let them
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