Staying ahead of censors in 2025 • Hacker News Board

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#191

Post by lurk2 » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 1:54 PM UTC

jmnicolas wrote: post #172

fguerraz wrote: post #168

You can’t fix censorship with tech. The only solution is booting the facists out.

You won't find many historical examples of fascists being booted out by the people. The only successful revolutions are piloted by a small elite with further interests that may not coincide with the people.

> You won't find many historical examples of fascists being booted out by the people.

Every fascist regime that has ever existed has been ousted by war, revolution, or the vote. There are no fascist regimes left, unless you expand the definition of the term to mean “any authoritarian regime,” in which case there are plenty of historical examples of popular revolt.

> The only successful revolutions are piloted by a small elite with further interests that may not coincide with the people.

This isn’t true.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#192

Post by naasking » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 1:55 PM UTC

Defletter wrote: post #37

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The problem is that it is really difficult to define what hate speech is It can be, but free speech types like to pretend it's nigh impossible. The UK has had modern hate-speech laws (for want of a better term) since the Public Order Act 1986, which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred. Amendments in 2006 and 2008 expanded that to religious and homophobic hatred respectively. This exists in stark c…

> which made it an offence to stir up or incite racial hatred.

If you point out that one racial demographic is responsible for more crimes than another, would that run afoul of the statute?

If not, what if you additionally point out that the reason these crimes were committed is likely because that behaviour is normalized in their culture? This seems like it would definitely run afoul of the statute, and if this logical deduction were valid, then this sort of criticism would be suppressed despite being legitimate, and could be weaponized against people.

I'm frankly not so convinced that it's possible to define hate speech in a way that does not allow for these failure modes.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#193

Post by squidbeak » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 1:57 PM UTC

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

Are you proposing we ignore communications threatening violence or inciting harm? For instance Lucy Connolly's tweet urging people to set fire to mosques?

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#194

Post by naasking » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 1:59 PM UTC

tarkin2 wrote: post #29

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…

"[A] direct attack on a democracy’s ability to form consensus" is a wonderfully precise term. Splitting democratic nations through fearmongering targeted at everyone's online profile is an incredible weapon.

Democracies virtually never form a consensus, there are always dissenters on any issue. Democracies reach decisions by majority rule, not consensus.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#195

Post by squidbeak » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 2:05 PM UTC

tyho wrote: post #178

kolektiv wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the most high-profile case was the Lucy Connolly one, where she posted: > "Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it” For additional context (which was relevant during the…

> following a highly publicised mass-murder of children which was (entirely wrongly) being blamed on asylum seekers. The mass-murder was a consequence of the asylum system. Given what is publicly known, parents of Axel Rudakubana were overwhelmingly likely to have been asylum seekers.

[flagged]

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#196

Post by flr03 » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 2:14 PM UTC

dmm wrote: post #169

flr03 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No there is a thing call the law, those are passed by elected people and applied by a judicial system that is not the executive branch. Hope that helps.

> applied by a judicial system that is not the executive branch You have the right to a trial. Defending yourself from a Federal felony charge only costs $250k+. Given recent events, I think undermining civil liberties to expand executive powers is crazy.

I am nowhere advocating to expand executive power in my response.

edit: apologies for not getting your point, I actually think I'm in line. Being able to defend yourself in the US looks too expensive.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#197

Post by asacrowflies » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

hdgvhicv wrote: post #111

asacrowflies wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a long held "western" value. Especially in the context of West vs Russia Iran North Korea etc. this rapid increase over the past few years in draconian enforcement of absurd thought control can not be explained away by such a shallow statement. ESPECIALLY the uk. Most of the American bill of rights and early constitutional amendment where based on centurys old English common law values just as much as t…

Hate speech has not been tolerated in the U.K. for many years. Other subversive speech hasn’t been tolerated in many counties, from nazi worship to glorifying terror, from obscenity to copyright. America bans Harry Potter, in the past The U.K. banned Lady Chatterly, Germany bans nazi worship but America is quite happy with it. Just because an american view on what is and isn’t acceptable exists doesn’t mean others ha…

Too much to address here and I don't have the time. But you are jumping around a lot and conflating culture war nonsense with legal enforcement. While also implying huge swaths of people are right wing nazis....

Harry potter has never EVER been banned in the USA and to say that with a straight face means we are in completely different universes and further engagement is pointless.

Many groups may have lobbied a retailer or a local school or library to voluntarily remove it. Even just to avoid drama/pr. I personally vehemently disagree with this type of censorship... But it is absolutely not what we see in the UK. The US equivalent would be federal terrorism charges for having harry potter. Absurd.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#198

Post by lukan » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

samuel wrote: post #152

lukan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The source is somewhat trustable mainstream but not really good, as already the headline is wrong. The other person was not jailed for insults against the rapists, but threats of violence. And that is a attack on the state monopol of violence itself, hence the harsh sentence.

But indeed, the rulings against the rapists don't seem allright and very much out of balance with the other sentence.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#199

Post by lukan » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

poszlem wrote: post #160

esperent wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

"The flaw in your argument is that it assumes a clear and workable distinction between "a joke" and "obvious hate speech"

That is usually easy derived from the context and the cases I know of "missunderstanding a joke" was rather deliberate misinterpretation of the law to get someone out of line.

Your example seems like this as well.

Re: Staying ahead of censors in 2025

#200

Post by lenkite » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 2:28 PM UTC

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

Why has Europe gone nutso ? They were the ones who kept lecturing us (Global South) about "freedom of speech and media is critical to democracy", yadda-yadda at every global conference. Now many of their laws are even worse than much of the third world and people are getting arrested for saying banal stuff online.

Why did this happen ? What changed ?