New UK law means online racist abusers could face 10-year bans from football | Hacker News Reader

New UK law means online racist abusers could face 10-year bans from football

theguardian.com

15 pointssofixa32 comments

Another reason why you should be happy to have freedom of speech in the US.

Free speech absolutism makes you seem sillier than you probably are.

If you go to an opera and you direct hate speech at the performers, is it a violation of free speech to ban you as punishment? Your use of speech is infringing on others' freedom and ability to conduct their business. It's not much different in football or any other sports.

Hate speech has a direct link to denying others' human rights and making it hostile for minorities or people under attack from hate speech to take part in society.

Being on the receiving end of racial abuse doesn't sound like freedmon to me.

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. I’d rather encounter the occasional negative comment than have people treat me like an alien because they’re afraid of legal consequences.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can also hurt me. Stones and sticks break only skin, while words are ghosts that haunt me. Slant and curved the word-swords fall, it pierces and sticks inside me. Bats and bricks may ache through bones, but words can mortify me. Pain from words has left its' scar, on mind and hear that's tender. Cuts and bruises have not healed, it's words that I remember.

Exactly, the ‘freedom’ to know what other people actually think about you is essential.

By silencing others you’re simply depriving yourself of your own right to hear them out.

To what end? Say that they tell me that they hate my kind, now what? Am I allowed to mail them because they’re a bigot? I expect you would say no to that. So then, to what end? So I can ban them from my private property?

You would rather not be able to tell who is and isn’t racist in your society?

If someone is prone to racist remarks that should be noticed and their thought process/moral failings should be addressed. If you simply threaten reprisal in advance you not only don’t address their core issue, but you also hide it from sight!

>By silencing others you’re simply depriving yourself of your own right to hear them out.

Why do we need to hear racists and bigots out? Their garbage opinions are neither novel nor of value to society, and the groups they target are well aware of the prejudice exists against them.

What is “racist” or “bigoted?” My family is Bangladeshi on both sides going back to time immemorial. But white people would consider much of what my mom would have to say about Bangladeshi culture “racist.” In the last decade, I’ve watched white people’s fear of being called racist force them to adopt basically a “noble savage” view of developing countries and as indigenous communities, where they’re forced to think of every problem in those societies as being caused by white people, because it’s taboo to talk about those societies’ flaws. That has real world negative effects—it chills honest discussion and empowers opportunists who realize they can amass more power railing against British colonialism than fixing social and cultural problems.

As someone from the developing world, the most important question to me is how did Britain colonize Bangladesh instead of the other way around—despite our head start? What are the things that make a people prosperous? You can’t have these conversations anymore. As a result the entire field of social sciences academia has been overtaken by ideas like “decolonization” instead of thinking about cultural innovation.

Would you run a startup that way? Trying to remove Apple or Google cultural influences from your organization?

I’ll decide what’s ‘novel’ and ‘of value’ for myself thanks. Which will require the right of ppl to express their conscience. Don’t need Boris Johnson’s (or anyone else’s) govt deciding this for me under threat of jail time.

Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

It actually does precisely mean freedom from legal consequences, yes.

Except it doesn’t. Go onto the street and hurl racist abuse at the nearest minority in a way that can be considered “calling for imminent harm” and you’ll find out quickly if there are consequences, legal or otherwise.

Sounds kind of racist to imply minorities will attack me with street violence if I say words they don’t like.

I’ll have to report this to the authorities mate, hope you’re not a big football fan.

Edit: you stealth edited your post to include the “imminent harm” part. Sorry bro I’ve already sent the evidence to your friends Boris Johnson and the police who you trust to vet what is and isn’t racist.

Try and not get so heated in future discussions.

The courts, and a jury of peers, decide what is and is not considered hate speech. In the USA the courts have decided that calling for imminent harm on someone (racially motivated or otherwise) is illegal.

Therefore the USA doesn’t have free speech and you live in a totalitarian police state nightmare?

Lol what did I say that was ‘heated’? Your first reply to me was a defense of street violence against me.

Threatening violence is a whole different topic and these laws encompass a lot more than “imminent violence” so not sure why you’ve brought that up.

Whoever makes the legal decision, I hope you have a good lawyer because the police should be knocking on your families’ door abt your racist post soon now. Cheers, I’m about to get rate limited by HN so might not reply.

> Threatening violence is a whole different topic

The conclusion to which can be summed up as: Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

Threats are prosecuted as intent to commit another crime, not ‘u said a naughty word.’ That’s why slogans such as “kill all men” would never lead to legal conviction in the US (they might in the UK!)

More importantly, the laws in this article are not about threats. Myself nor any freedom of conscious supporters I know of would claim verbal intent to commit a crime should be protected from legal consequence.

So unless you can name any, this is not only off topic but also a straw man.

So in conclusion you agree that freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences, and the USA law also agrees - “Yelling fire in a crowded theatre” etc.

Which is the point of discussion you started when you said “it does precisely mean there are never any legal consequences for saying anything”.

It is legal in the US to yell fire in a crowded theater. It is not legal to intentionally create a false emergency situation, verbally or otherwise.

Similar to threats, it’s not the speech that is illegal but the intent to commit a crime. Like any other criminal trial, your words can be used against you.

Not sure what more you’d mean when you say “freedom from consequences” (or how this relates to the article) but youre arguing against a point no one is attempting to make it seems. None of what you’ve mentioned is what’s meant by ‘freedom of speech’.

> It is legal in the US to yell fire in a crowded theater. It is not legal to intentionally create a false emergency situation, verbally or otherwise.

Thus one could conclude, and stay with me here because this is complex, that the freedom to yell fire in a crowded theater does not… prevent you from facing legal consequences for yelling fire in a crowded theater.

You could take this understanding and you could reduce it down a snappy, easy to digest form: Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

What precisely was the point of your original post then? To assert a concept that has nothing to do with the article and that no one disagrees with?

One possible reading is you were actually intending to defend the laws in the article (not threats), and then had to stealth-edit your racist post to be about threats after I called you out. Now you’re stuck in that position.

Glad we seem to agree the speech in this article should be legally allowed unless it is genuine physical threats.

> One possible reading is you were actually intending to defend the laws in the article (not threats), and then had to stealth-edit your racist post to be about threats after I called you out. Now you’re stuck in that position.

Please don’t get heated again. Silly comments about contacting the prime minister and deflecting by calling racism detract from your argument and make you seem quite immature.

It’s both sad and telling how you read “minorities will violently attack you in the street” from that message, rather than “people will call the police on you and you may loose your job or face other societal consequences in response to your speech”.

> One possible reading is you were actually intending to defend the laws in the article

Of course I am. To me it doesn’t make a difference if you’re legally allowed to say something but then immediately face legal consequences from saying that thing, and just not being legally allowed to say something. It’s one and the same.

And the laws are good. I’m ok with them. Unlike the US the UK has a very healthy and diverse press, despite having no constitutionally defined freedom of speech, and the courts are robust and generally sensible.

So whatever, you’ve got to face consequences of your actions. If you want to go and send racist stuff to footballers then you’ll be banned from football. Cool. 100% down with that.

> > One possible reading is you were actually intending to defend the laws in the article

>Of course I am. To me it doesn’t make a difference if you’re legally allowed to say something but then immediately face legal consequences from saying that thing, and just not being legally allowed to say something. It’s one and the same.

Then why deflect for several posts to talking about threats?

I get that you’re probably trying to cover for any legal consequences to your racist post (yes it was racist, tell it to the judge) We could’ve had a more fruitful discussion about the laws in the article otherwise. But my attention span is strained.

Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. That’s the post you’re replying to. There are lots of examples of this, even within US law, some of which revolve around threats. If you’re new to this site and if you have a limited attention span then you can just press the back button to review the conversation you’ve been having, it’s not ephemeral.

“Fire in a crowded theater” was a metaphor for protesting the draft during a war. We absolutely should have the right to do that, and we do; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States was wrongly decided and substantially overturned.

Why, is the government running football now?

The article is about government legislation.

Legislation that has existed for decades for the purpose of making football stadiums a safer place for all people to attend, and to cut down on hooliganism. People who would get several years' worth of bans if they used their hate speech in a stadium will now get the same bans from sports venues if they are caught doing that online too.

No thanks.

Sticking to an American frame and the principle of freedom of speech from the federal government, if the premier league or another private organization wanted to enforce this from the boundaries of their stadium, that's fine.(banning people from being racist at football matches). Having legislation create a system of using the top level government resources to patrol the internet for what they deem to be racist should be concerning to a statesman that holds the original principles of the federal goverment to be law. This is because not only could they liberally enforce this onto people who are not being racist, but also to decide some forms of actual racism isn't racist and create a class of people who are above justice without any check on this power at the country level(except a slow bureaucracy/judicial system). Of course, England can do what ever it wants. If this is across the board what english want for themselves, great for them!

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