UK's Online Safety Act comes into force

Understand that 99% of VPNs can be trivialy shut down if they wanted.

The loophole is tolerated. For now.

> Your response is chock full of weird distortions like this -- way too many to unpack and patiently analyze.

No it isn't. If you can't explain what the issue is with my logic then what you are saying is utterly unconvincing. I was largely correct about everything I have claimed. I will grant you I may get minutia wrong, but that doesn't take away from the general point that I am making.

> Point being: if this is how the truth gets mangled and distorted inside your own head; or you simply choose not to vet and fact-check your sources, at least once in a while -- then that's a situation which you've created for yourself. Not the doing of some totalitarian government, or any other kind of external bully.

No what you are doing is known as gas-lighting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

What you are essentially trying to convince me that I am crazy. I am quite familiar with this form argumentation and I don't appreciate it.

I will redirect you back to the point that was being discussed, because you made several accusations towards me that just aren't true and I am not going bother to address them after you tried gas-lighting me. All I am going to tell you is that I actively avoid news sites these days as I agree they omit information to suit a narrative.

The point being discussed was whether people an alarming number of people were being imprisoned for speech in the UK. Some people have compared Russia and the UK. Russia is ran essentially by a dictator, the UK is a constitution Monarchy and is considered to be modern democracy. The UK is supposed to be better in regards to Russia in a vast number of things, one of those being human rights.

There are three simple facts:

* People in the UK can be and have been punished for speech.

* People in Russia can be and have been punished for speech.

* There is evidence that there are less people per capita being arrested and prosecuted in the Russia for speech than the UK. This has been reported on by a number of news sources which looks like it has come from official numbers.

It does not matter to me what rationale is used for justify that punishment is, I don't believe people should be punished for speech outside of very specific criteria e.g. direct calls for violence (that quote your provided from Richard Medhurst wouldn't fall under that btw) or defamation.

What exact bullshit legislation people have been charged under is something I don't care about. I don't make the distinction. I believe it is to create a chilling effect, and allow the two major parties to prosecute their political rivals.

e.g. There was even talk of prosecuting Nigel Farage (one of the eternal boogiemen) shortly after this year election as the media were trying to pretend he was somehow the cause of the riots earlier this year. I don't like him, but he didn't cause the riots.

> Then that's an irreconcilable difference between us. I happen to think that factual details matter and are very important. Moral narratives, not so much.

1) The point I was making is that there shouldn't be any prosecutions of this kind, so what act they are prosecuted under is irrelevant.

2) You then pretending I am arguing a moral narrative when it isn't. I am arguing on principle. That are not the same thing.

BTW I didn't form this opinion from news articles online. I came to this opinion by reading books around the subject, where half of each page is often citations.

> No, I'm just pointing out some very basic logical gaps in some of the stuff you were saying.

No you didn't. You asserted it was so and then told me I imagined half of it. That is literally gas-lighting.

> Which would suggest that you are, at worst, perhaps a bit underinformed about certain things.

You haven't shown that at all. What you did was ignore the point I was trying to make and get into minutia about what act who was being prosecuted under.

This is disingenuous.

> Or otherwise not taking as critical an eye to the various media sources you ingest as you perhaps could be.

I do. You are making the assertion (without evidence) I don't and I don't appreciate it. When the Epstein court documents were released, I read a fair deal of it (it is well over 1000 pages). When Activision was taken to court for sexual discrimination I read the actual complaint submitted to the Californian court. You know why I read the original court documents? I realised I had been lied to before by some media sources (some of those people believe to be credible as well).

So I actually do go to the original source video, document wherever possible.

So your assertions made without evidence are disingenuous.

> That's all that need be said. I recommend we give this topic a rest, and move onto other threads.

Not at all. You tried to gaslight me. You didn't actually engage with anything I said. That is disingenuous.

The other issues compounding this is that to make all this work, as the police grow they grow asymmetrically on the administrative side. So every dollar spent is slowly but surely less effective at performing basic police functions.

>Managing police by statistics

Thats the crux of the whole problem isnt it? The cops in the UK face the same issue as any tech business that cant scale. They are spending more effort measuring statistics and less effort on the business. To the point that, they gamified policing to ensure statistics are collected.

>If you treat them as permanently unsolved crimes, you'll turn them into pointless counterproductive arrests/charges.

Ok but the administrative detections skewed things away from serious crimes. Why detect 1 murder when you can detect 42 drug crimes across 3 people? And then the administrative overhead of recording the 42 drug crimes takes that guy off the beat for the rest of the day. And because they spent all their money on the people who will process and analyze that paperwork, they don't have another guy to replace him.

Like the general thought the guy presents is that, 42 drug infractions letting you bust some kids balls and shake him down, but then removing you from the act of physical deterrence for the rest of the day is the fail state. If he wasnt incentivised to shake those kids down, he could have deterred some incalculable other crime. Perhaps those kids seeing the cop would have moderated their behavior, but now they are up on charges and the next group of kids on the same street corner are able to act without the cops watching (And this is when we leave the book and start talking about how many damn cameras the UK installs)

I disagree with him but I understand the impulse to admire something constructed like a Sheriffs department in the US thats fairly divorced from a huge hierarchy.

I wonder if he has similar complaints about policing in canada.

You want to give the power to the people that make the laws to also decree what is true or not? This is going to turn out well.

I don’t think that having institutions that can legislate the truth is compatible with free and just societies. Political power and democratic majorities do not decide the truth. if you think otherwise I don’t believe there is common ground to be found.