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Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

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Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#131
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to not have powerful people What does this even mean?

Make currently powerful people less powerful and currently powerless people more powerful. C'mon, HN users forgot how to think? Forgot to ask Claude?

To do that you first need to become more powerful than those powerful people, right?

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#132

It seems suspicious to me that they do not include the "offending" Facebook post. It seems like this is it, and it seems completely in the realm of journalism, https://scontent.fcps4-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/6654022...

This link doesn't seem to load

The domain only has an IPv6 address, so the link doesn't work on IPv4.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in jail. Nobody doing this remotely believed that they wouldn't have to settle. They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother. Same for…

> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother. some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand. i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially lif…

Students are young and often have nothing to lose, aside from missing opportunities.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#135
post #105
post #48

This is a textbook free speech issue, versus not being able to post your conspiracy theory on some web site which has nothing to do with free speech.

Who decideds what is free speech and what is a conspiracy theory? For a long time saying tabaco creates lung cancers was basically a conspiracy theory and saying it is healthy was free speech.

Since at least the 70s everyone knew that it caused lung cancer. It's just that industry spending prevented anyone from doing something about it, in the exactly the same way that we've been seeing with global warming.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#137

This type of treatment of citizenry by the State of Texas, and its various (and especially red ) localities should be all one needs to see of where conservatives (and Christian Naitonalism) will take our country in the future -- should they get their way. Republicans hope to enable just such a future by scaring Americans with made-up visions of transsexuals 'grooming' their children, yet they cleverly hide what await…

Well said.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#138
I once stated to one of my fathers aqaintences in the local town council that I was considering refuseing to pay my water bill on the grounds that water is defined as a coulorless, odourless liquid, and what comes out of my tap is niether, his imediate request was "can I use that?" and so, not too long after we got a significant upgrade to the towns water, which is now of a much better quality, withmore upgrades all the time.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother. some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand. i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially lif…

Yea, an arrest on your record, even if you're acquitted and/or get a settlement for police wrongdoing, can still mess you up. There are employers and landlords who will ask you / check whether you were ever arrested, regardless of the outcome of the arrest . Mere involvement with Law Enforcement puts a permanent black mark on your record and can interfere with basic things for the rest of your life.

As someone who lives this reality (arrest but no conviction), it's in practice not really so bad. It's never come up with a landlord. The last time it came up was after being accepted to grad school and I had to fill out a form about it. You do just carry with you the knowledge that if you ever get pulled over the cop can pull it up about you and have reason to hassle you more.

Re: Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality

#140

I assume she will get a settlement, the city (the taxpayer) will pay for it and nothing else changes. There will be even less money for infrastructure repair and people will keep voting for the same people.

The point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in jail. Nobody doing this remotely believed that they wouldn't have to settle. They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother. Same for…

Mostly this

> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.

That needs reiterating because an uncomfortable amount of people think this sort of thing simply doesn't affect them.

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