UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse • Hacker News Board

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#251

Post by hopelite » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 1:19 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #180

Xelbair wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I've been visiting Britain as a tourist for years(since more than 10 years ago) - mostly to visit my friends who live there. Each time i come there it's worse than previous trip, and your whole infrastructure feels oppressive. Constant reminders to be vigilant because something bad might happen(train and metro jingles come to mind) - implying a terrorist attack. Constant reminders that you're watched by cameras…

>> then terrorist scare of 2000s The Ariana Grande concert bombing was only five years ago. You can see a list of those in the 2020's here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...

Yes, and it was effectively facilitated by the British government through its actions and policies.

The whole highest order issue in the whole west is that there is not only effectively zero responsibility, zero accountability, but also zero consequences.

The easiest to understand example of this may be how corporations can commit all manner of what are effectively crimes (i.e., it is what you would be charged with) and they not only do not have any effective consequences, the consequences usually instill the lesson that it is extremely profitable to commit the crimes and just pay the meaningless fine as a cost of business.

In most cases corporations even just account for it as an expense and add it to the cost and price they charge. So, for example, all the EU fines they so concisely levied over the last years against American tech companies like Microsoft and Google; they had been charging the various European governments and companies for a reserve to pay such expected fines.

It always baffles me that people do not understand the basic premise that organizations of people are not their own entities, especially when you don’t punish the individuals that make them up in the same way that individuals that are not in corporations are. Is quite literally a kind of new stratified system. Joe if ACME Corp can commit financial crimes and get away with it, but you can’t. He can even commit homicide through negligence with impunity, while you are thrown in jail for decades.

It really should be the other way around, if a corporation commits crimes, if you did or should have known about the crimes, you are collectively also held criminally liable just like a getaway driver of a bank robbery is.

Somehow we have not evolved past the point that the most powerful and responsible are the least accountable and have the least consequences for their actions.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#252

Post by foldr » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 1:20 PM UTC

moomin wrote: post #92

nrawe wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to be wrong, but I don't believe that's correct. There have been some people arrested for inciting violence via social media during the Southport riots. There is also Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who has been remanded in custody for contempt of court for continuing to libel an immigrant even after his claims were proven to be false. And by contempt of court, he literally has produced a movie contin…

Vandalism and destruction of property is a shockingly low bar. The suffragettes threw an axe at the king and no-one said they should be a proscribed organisation.

If I broke into a US military base and started vandalizing B-52s, I honestly think I'd be pretty lucky to escape with my life.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#253

Post by aaronbaugher » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 1:27 PM UTC

extraisland wrote: post #52

yungporko wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's really nothing anybody can do. protests dont work, riots dont work, petitions dont work, and theres nobody else to vote for who isn't also a cunt.

Voting for the alternatives won't make any difference either. The power structure is designed in such a way that it is difficult for the Government itself to do change anything.

Right. The big lie of what's called Our Democracy (in the US, UK, and other Western nations) is that having 51% on your side and winning elections means you get some control over government. What recent years have made clear is that the bureaucratic class does what it wants, and resists most attempts by the people to control it through their representatives, using its media wing to call those anti-democratic and other epithets. At best, you can make temporary changes that the machine will roll back as soon as it can get rid of your representatives.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#254

Post by amanaplanacanal » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 1:27 PM UTC

arichard123 wrote: post #44

khalic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False equivalence, the local pub doesn’t keep track of your identity.

My local knows exactly who I am, that I'm over 18, where I live, who my kids are, how old they are, what I like to drink etc.

Your local pub doesn't keep records of everything evreryone does in the pub so that they can collate all of your habits and either sell it to advertisers or hand it over to the government when requested.

It's a way different set of incentives and outcomes.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#255

Post by vidarh » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 1:28 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #241

vidarh wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaker's Corner has never been a place "were police will tolerate any sort of speech". It's a place where anyone can speak . You're still subjected to exactly the same legal restrictions on the speech itself as anywhere else in public, and that's nothing new.

It's not new, no - the position has been the same since at least the XIX century, when Britain gave asylum to European insurrectionalists. But it's always been fundamentally hypocritical: being "free" to complete a sentence before you go to prison is not meaningfully different from getting interrupted before you go to prison.

I wish it wasn't like that, but the position isn't hypocritical:

You're free to complete saying something unlawful because until you've said something unlawful you haven't committed a crime, but furthermore, English law on what is "unlawful" to say or do is also complicated in that many things are okay to say or do in contexts where they will not cause offence but becomes illegal if done in front of the "wrong" people or with the "wrong" intent.

As such, until there has been a complaint there often will not be a basis for saying that something was unlawful to say unless it is really far over the line.

If you were to start shouting something blatantly illegal such as chanting support for a proscribed organisation, you must certainly would not find police standing there and waiting unless they deemed it likely to be more disruptive to peace and order to stop you right away.

This expends past speech - e.g. public nudity is in the same category that isn't illegal in itself but where intent or the effect on others can make it unlawful - and this notion on relying on intent and whether or not someone present took offense rather than clearly delineating where the boundary is, is a challenge with English law because of the huge gray areas it creates.

[used "English law" as shorthand here - really it is the law of England & Wales, and much of it will be the same in Scotland, but Scotland does have a separate legal system, hence why it isn't "UK law"]

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#256

Post by dgroshev » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 1:29 PM UTC

DecoySalamander wrote: post #246

dgroshev wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even internally consistent, although propaganda rarely needs to be consistent. The UK government is somehow both entirely powerless (can't do anything about crime at all), and exceptionally powerful (tightly policing the speech and thoughts of 70 million people). Very little odd about this btw. Those efforts are intentional and blatant, e.g. [0]. In that case, you can even see that the accounts listed in the…

This isn't necessarily contradictory. A government can choose not to prosecute certain crimes, such as property crimes targeting lower classes or crimes committed by certain social groups, while cracking down on what it perceives as a threat to its power. I'm not saying that this is happening in the UK now, but every piece of news I hear about it is less than great, to say the least.

Where do you get those news from, precisely? Who has influence over what does and doesn't get seen?

I will just link instead of re-typing the same points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44711336

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#257

Post by lkramer » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 1:31 PM UTC

nxm wrote: post #61

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There oddly seems to be a concerted effort online to paint the UK as some kind of failing police state recently. This narrative seems to have really taken off with some Americans, who now seem completely convinced that the UK government is some kind of totalitarian oppressor who are snatching people off the streets. Meanwhile, Brits just look on at this narrative wondering what the hell they're talking about. Look, I…

What is happening in Britain is people are being actually arrested for “offensive” speech, which is of course subjective, subject to abuse, and open to totalitarian oppression. This is why the First Amendment in the US constitution is so important

Sure, but so are people in the US, despite the first amendment.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#258

Post by gadders » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 1:32 PM UTC

hopelite wrote: post #251

gadders wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> then terrorist scare of 2000s The Ariana Grande concert bombing was only five years ago. You can see a list of those in the 2020's here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...

Yes, and it was effectively facilitated by the British government through its actions and policies. The whole highest order issue in the whole west is that there is not only effectively zero responsibility, zero accountability, but also zero consequences. The easiest to understand example of this may be how corporations can commit all manner of what are effectively crimes (i.e., it is what you would be charged with)…

The rest of your text may have a bit of a point, but:

>>effectively facilitated by the British government through its actions and policies.

Nothing justifies blowing up teenage girls you deluded psychopath.

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#259

Post by khalic » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 1:36 PM UTC

extraisland wrote: post #250

khalic wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of them is closed and had a yearly of 5k, not exactly screaming legitimacy. But the other one… yeah they seem real. So my apologies indeed

> One of them is closed and had a yearly of 5k, not exactly screaming legitimacy. I've closed businesses after they weren't successful. Doesn't mean it was illegitimate? No. It means they didn't make money. Even if that one wasn't legit there are plenty of others that one can find easily e.g. https://crowdsnow.com/ https://crowdsondemand.com/ It isn't very nice when people dismiss things like this when they can be fo…

Yeah I’m really sorry about that, that argument of payed crowds always seemed so manufactured…

Gotta work a little more on those assumptions

Re: UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse

#260

Post by KaiserPro » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 1:39 PM UTC

hn_throw2025 wrote: post #230

KaiserPro wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Britain is people are being actually arrested for “offensive” speech This isn't actually new though. The difference is that they'd normally be nicked for breaching the peace, which is loosey goosey enough to be used for most things. ASBOs are far more totalitarian as they can legally stop people from doing legal things. (ie stop a child playing in a park) But to tackle your main point, Yes people are being arrested…

You post recognises the boundary between free and illegal speech. You have not addressed the fact that UK policing guidelines now have a third category of “legal but harmful” (which has resulted in real door knocks). This is subject to political outlook and therefore as “loosey goosey” as it gets.

> now have a third category of “legal but harmful”

I'm sorry but the police always have had that. Again, ASBOs, public order offences, "please move along now", town dispersal orders.

Specifically ASBOs give the police the power to stop someone doing almost any action, the courts have deemed antisocial.

A good example of that is street preachers being stopped from using megaphones, which must have happened as early as ~2005

> which has resulted in real door knocks

from the OSA, I'm not aware of any cases yet?

> This is subject to political outlook and therefore as “loosey goosey” as it gets.

The law is always subject to political outlook. Even a constitution is no match for a concerted effort to undermine it. For example: article 124/125 of the 1936 USSR constitution allowed freedom of press, religion and the right to gather.

Look, unless we get someone extreme in power, and they are uniquely competent, they we are mostly safe. What will change that is the steady drip drip drip, of both economic hardship, and a willing medium to blame that on minorities.

So 2028 is around the time that jenrick will attempt to lock us all up.