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Staying ahead of censors in 2025

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Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#151

Post by computerfriend »

miroljub wrote: post #64
earthnail wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d much rather get arrested in Britain than Russia or Iran. And I certainly wouldn’t put the UK in the same bucket as Russia and Iran. Not even close. Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms? It’s a direct attack on a democracy’s ability to form consensus. I don’t think we’ve found the right, effective way to deal with this problem yet, but I applaud any democ…

If you live anywhere in the west, you should be more concerned by being arrested by your own government then by some government in the other part of the world.

This is true (modulo travel and extradition) regardless of where in the world you live.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#152

Post by samuel »

lukan wrote: post #137
antonymoose wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany you can receive a suspended sentence for raping a minor and then an actual jail sentence for insulting the rapist. I’ve seen similar outrageous arrests for mean tweets in the UK. Europe has lost its mind about right and wrong.

I am german and live here, but am not aware of such rulings. Please provide sources.

Is this source trustable? (I have no idea, I'm not german)

https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/kriminalitaet/article2521783...

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#153

Post by FergusArgyll »

thrance wrote: post #76
curtisblaine wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think groyper speech is (or should be) automatically banned, though. It's a point of view that many find abhorrent, but it should be possible to express it. Same for far left messages encouraging the public to "eat the rich".

Please do not equate demands for more taxations with calls to do more genocides of jewish people. The far right is uniquely problematic in our modern political landscape. And I disagree, free speech is a liberal value, you don't get to say nazi shit and hide behind free speech. Being a groyper is not a crime, but calling for genocide is and should be punished. Else we run the risk of normalizing these abhorrent ideas…

What does "hide behind free speech" mean?

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#154

Post by CraigJPerry »

sanskritical wrote: post #138
lukan wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech'" Are you serious here? In russia you get problems for calling a war a war and worse problems if you say it is a bad war. In UK you certainly can call a war a war and you can critize the government or other people all day long. What you cannot do is calling for violence against them. Or do you have counterexamples?

> What you cannot do is calling for violence against them. This is blatantly disingenuous. The Public Order Act 1986, Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 all criminalize "insulting" and "abusive" words, or any public display of literature that is "insulting" or "abusive" -- much more than calls for violence: > A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words…

>> What you cannot do is calling for violence against them.

> This is blatantly disingenuous. The Public Order Act 1986 ... ... criminalize "insulting" and "abusive" words ...

Do you know what i find disingenuous here, you hooked me with the words i quoted above so i went to the legislation:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64

And the thing to stand out was the change of meaning when the full quote is provided:

____

Fear or provocation of violence. (1)A person is guilty of an offence if he—

(a)uses towards another person threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or

(b)distributes or displays to another person any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,

with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him or another by any person, or to provoke the immediate use of unlawful violence by that person or another, or whereby that person is likely to believe that such violence will be used or it is likely that such violence will be provoked.

____

If you have to rely on this kind of disingenuous trickery to make a point, then you don't have a point.

The GP is correct in their statement:

>> What you cannot do is calling for violence against them.

You are incorrect in yours:

> This is blatantly disingenuous.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#155

Post by poszlem »

lukan wrote: post #107
nomilk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also surprised the post focusses on Rus/Iran when Australia, UK, and many more countries (Malaysia, Thailand) have/are introducing laws to prevent large swaths of free speech (banning mediums by age, banning conversation by topic, or by making speaking one's mind online too risky, as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech').

"as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech'" Are you serious here? In russia you get problems for calling a war a war and worse problems if you say it is a bad war. In UK you certainly can call a war a war and you can critize the government or other people all day long. What you cannot do is calling for violence against them. Or do you have counterexamples?

Lol. How about "praying silently outside of an abortion clinic"? - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gze361j7xo

How about calling a natal male a "he" - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arre...

Or perhaps: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/graham...

OBVIOUSLY there is a difference between Russia and the UK, obviously Russia is worse. But saying "the only thing you can't do is call for violence against them" is a completely dishonest characterisation of the situation, when we've seen documented cases of police overreach and people being arrested for thought crimes.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#156

Post by blell »

berkes wrote: post #144
blell wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s much simpler. The Tor project is politically biased in a way that they think the things the UK arrest people for should get people arrested.

That's a very serious and bold accusation you make there. It's so serious, that you should really back it up with some evidence or at least some foundation. Got any?

What kind of evidence would you take? If it’s someone from the project openly saying what I imply, there obviously isn’t any. But if you are looking for evidence that the project took a politically biased turn to one side of the aisle, I’m sure you’ll find a lot on your own. And from there you can understand why there isn’t a single mention of what’s happening in the UK.

In this very thread you can find lots of comments excusing the censorship because it’s being used to censor the “wrong ideas”.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#157

Post by sanskritical »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #154
sanskritical wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What you cannot do is calling for violence against them. This is blatantly disingenuous. The Public Order Act 1986, Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 all criminalize "insulting" and "abusive" words, or any public display of literature that is "insulting" or "abusive" -- much more than calls for violence: > A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words…

>> What you cannot do is calling for violence against them. > This is blatantly disingenuous. The Public Order Act 1986 ... ... criminalize "insulting" and "abusive" words ... Do you know what i find disingenuous here, you hooked me with the words i quoted above so i went to the legislation: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64 And the thing to stand out was the change of meaning when the full quote is provid…

The statute says "or" and an a) b) c) bullet point listing in a statute also means "or". Maybe you are unfamiliar with boolean logic, but I was listing the relevant lines of the statute which allow someone who did not call for violence to be prosecuted, and the standard interpretation used by prosecutors to prosecute people for non-violent, non-threatening, insulting speech.

What about Elizabeth Kinney, arrested for a simple slur in a private text message to a friend about the man who assaulted her, minutes after being beaten? What about the tens of thousands of people arrested who did not threaten violence?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c703e03w243o

Just like Elizabeth Kinney, this man did not threaten violence at all. He just said "they should not be allowed to live here."

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#158

Post by vaylian »

systemtest wrote: post #147
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #17

Considering the staggering number of arrest for online/offensive communications in England & Wales, we should add Britain to the list of Russia and Iran 2017: ~5,500 arrests 2019: ~7,734 arrests 2023: ~12,183 arrests

The Netherlands in the recent past has detained journalists on multiple occasions but you never read about that. Absolute horrible for a “free” country.

Is there no online source at all?

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#159

Post by flr03 »

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #24
earthnail wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d much rather get arrested in Britain than Russia or Iran. And I certainly wouldn’t put the UK in the same bucket as Russia and Iran. Not even close. Hate speech is a problem. If it wasn’t, why are Russia and China spending so much on troll farms? It’s a direct attack on a democracy’s ability to form consensus. I don’t think we’ve found the right, effective way to deal with this problem yet, but I applaud any democ…

The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is, and more often than not it's used as a cudgel to silence the opposition. For Iran and Russia, it is what Khamenei and Putin don't want to hear, in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.

Law is always subject to interpretation and as imperfect as it sounds it is better than no law at all. And I'm not talking about hate speech specifically. Using this as a tool to silence opposition is possible and made easy in countries that do not value and nurture independence of institutions and have rampant corruption, often countries with authoritarian leadership. UK is not exempt of criticism, it would be unhealthy not to, but comparing Russia/Putin with UK/Starmer makes it evident that you are more concerned by pushing a political agenda that by facts and reason.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#160

Post by poszlem »

esperent wrote: post #141
lukan wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"as almost anything now can be interpreted as 'offensive' or 'hate speech'" Are you serious here? In russia you get problems for calling a war a war and worse problems if you say it is a bad war. In UK you certainly can call a war a war and you can critize the government or other people all day long. What you cannot do is calling for violence against them. Or do you have counterexamples?

I've been hearing lots of crazy things about people getting arrested in the UK for posting "memes" or things like that. So I decided to look for examples. All the examples I can find are clearly hate speech, policed more strongly than I would prefer but not that much more strongly, if I'm honest. The most egregious case I could find was someone arrested for a meme of a pride flag morphing into a swastika. Probably no…

The flaw in your argument is that it assumes a clear and workable distinction between "a joke" and "obvious hate speech." Yet one of the strongest objections to the very concept of "hate speech" is precisely that we lack a reliable way to stop the term from expanding indefinitely.

The case of Count Dankula is a textbook example: it is plainly a joke, and interpreting it as Nazi promotion or hate speech requires an extraordinary degree of bad faith. And yet, that is exactly how it was treated. https://www.vice.com/en/article/youtube-count-dankula-mark-m...

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