Crackdowns and Censorship in the UK | Hacker News Reader

Crackdowns and Censorship in the UK

washingtonpost.com

3 pointsreillyse6 comments

> The police crackdown on such protests has raised questions about freedom of speech during this fraught period for the United Kingdom.

Those questions were answered years ago when mean tweets [1] and nazi pugs [2] resulted in arrests. Those were not isolated cases [3]. Let's not act surprised now.

[1] https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/09/05/trolling-malicious-com...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925

[3] Two-and-a-half thousand Londoners have been arrested over the past five years for allegedly sending “offensive” messages - https://www.theregister.com/2016/06/02/social_media_arrests_...

I'm not a free speech maximalist like many people in the US. I think many things should be against the law for people to say. Inciting violence, hate speech etc.

What concerns me about this is arbitrary use of the police and censorship to deny freedom of expression in a way that breaks no laws.

There is nothing in the UK that makes protesting the monarchy against the law. It is perfectly legal to assemble and protest the monarchy. In fact, that freedom is explicitly protected.

State intimidation for things that are explicitly legal in the UK is also nothing new - see their police logging of "non-crime hate incidents", even for schoolchildren:

https://reclaimthenet.org/the-uks-chilling-non-crime-hate-in...

I had a look at your account and for one that is 78 days old, you’ve done an insane amount of trolling.

Are you part of a deliberate trolling org? I’m not sure one person can hold so many conflicting viewpoints?

Which alleged viewpoints of mine conflict? And is that what we're calling drawing attention to relevant but ignored facts? Trolling? And to not troll, I would have to accept journalist's framing and cherry-picking of stories without complaint?

There has also been a lot of censorship of tv shows (last week tonight got censored) and of signs held at football matches etc which have been removed from television broadcasts.

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