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Comment by valdiorn | Hacker News Reader

Wow, someone has not been keeping up with the news coming out of the UK. Lots and lots of people been arrested and charged for saying, not actually hate speech, just "mean things" on Twitter. Usually it's just obvious jokes, perhaps of bad taste, that someone decided to take literally and then claim they felt "harassed and intimidated" (the magic phrase which causes the police to investigate).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10668005/Man-avoids...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43864133

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/john-scriven-pla...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11066477/Veteran-ar... - literally arrested for a tweet that "caused anxiety".

If you want more, check out count dankula's (mark meechan) second YouTube channel, he covers pretty much all these high profile "offensive tweet" cases. Most of them are ridiculous.

View on HN

The UK seems to have gone off the deep end here. I hope that this kind of behavior by law enforcement is not something that the public will find acceptable, and that it will be rejected and ridiculed as it should be.

From a distance it seems like the UK has gone off the deep end in general.

If you keep posting flamebait to HN we are going to have to ban you.

Brit here.

Some of this stuff makes me uncomfortable about where to draw the line here. I, frankly, don't know. What makes me even more uncomfortable is not that the USA draws the line differently (better? worse? Just right? I don't know) but that so many USA'ians are so utterly cocksure that their way is right and everywhere else must be wrong if they do it differently (Edit: extensively in online posts such as here; in american's I've known I've very rarely found it). There seems no possibility in that mindset for any self-reflection or questioning, and that's dangerous.

Just my tuppence ha'penny.

As an American, the importance of free speech is ingrained in us from a very early age. It is thought of as a foundation of free society, and it is a VERY high bar to justify using the law to prevent speech.

It is a Central American value.

Yes. I know that and you've just presented it again without asking yourself if it's right or if others should be judged by your standards. You've kind of made my point.

Oh, I question it myself all the time. I am still very much in favor of free speech, although I do think we as a society need to work on dealing with the consequences of free speech rather than just thinking it will work itself out.

However, my concerns with free speech would never include the types of things the UK is enforcing here. I am not worried about people being upset or hurt by mean things, I am worried about false information and propaganda.

Why? What exactly is it achieving for your society?

Possibly a massive lot of good - or not. My point was, it doesn't seem questioned by those who espouse it so strongly, so if it's set wrongly (if we can decide such a thing) it can't be re-set better.

Political stability. The US has operated under its current system of government for longer than any other democratic country. Allowing the craziest to express themselves without being silenced allows the democratic process to play out in a way that legitimizes the outcome.

I agree that having some of the world's broadest protections for free speech is important to the US political stability, & its technological/cultural/economic power.

But, hasn't the UK's "current system of government" been at least as continuous as the US for longer? (Has any regime-discontinuity happened since, say, the adoption of the US Constitution?)

It does very much depend on how you define “continuous” and “democracy”.

That aside, I think there is enough evidence that restricting political speech in a democracy kind of defeats the point and it disenfranchises people. Some counter this by saying “well we only want to ban the extreme speech”, but I’d argue those are exactly the people who are likely to take up pitchforks first.

A right to only “moderate” political speech doesn’t make any sense. Moderate speech isn’t a target of censorship.

So what are your definitions of those terms, that imply the US "has operated under its current system of government for longer than" the UK?

It also helps set and/or make visible the window of acceptable-to-some-(epsilon,delta)-part-of-the-populace speech; that’s good because it prevents Bad Things from forming in a vacuum before suddenly appearing in the mainstream… but it can also be uncomfortable for some, or cause anxiety or fear. It seems better to get an opportunity to confront Bad Things, or debunk them, or whatever though.

Obviously it’s not okay or legal to threaten someone, but on the other hand we also get taught to a large degree that you have no right to not have your feelings hurt. This intuitively makes sense to me too-can you imagine if you tried to speak nearly anything and had to ensure that no one, anywhere, had their feelings hurt or felt anxious from it?

Speech outside that may not get you arrested, but it can certainly have personal and professional implications.

As an example (and they’re not all this clear-cut), it’s perfectly legal to espouse “plain racism” but it’s not a generally accepted thing, nor considered moral, and quite likely to cause you some backlash or, if applicable, loss of professional standing.

Well said.

I agree, allowing bad opinions to be countered publicly is really important. Peer pressure is way more effective in changing bad opinions than unilateral pressure from someone preconceived to be a political enemy. The latter usually just cements bad opinions as justified.

That was arguable in the pre-Trump state of American politics. But now? You have total crazies saying whatever (either total bullshit, advocating for/admitting crimes, etc.) running for and winning elections. This is not a stable situation, as evidenced by the fact that the man who normalised this sort of thing tried a coup to stay in office, and many people, supporters of his, including people in office or running for office, supported that effort and are already organising for the next election cycles.

What you're describing is not being caused by free speech, it is being caused by online media filter bubbles that feed people confirmation bias, elevate controversy over quality, and isolate users from opposing opinions.

Forcing people into silence definitely will not solve the problem. It will only further convince people that they were right all along.

To fix this, SV needs to get their shit together and figure out how to solve the filter bubble problem. Traditional media used editorial discretion to solve this problem, but SV seems to think they can make more money by skipping that step entirely.

However, the current state of politics in the US is by far not as bad as many moments in our past.

>What you're describing is not being caused by free speech, it is being caused by online media filter bubbles that feed people confirmation bias, elevate controversy over quality, and isolate users from opposing opinions.

But free speech must allow for filter bubbles and confirmation bias, and elevating controversy over quality. Free speech must permit manipulation and distortion, indoctrination and radicalization.

>Traditional media used editorial discretion to solve this problem, but SV seems to think they can make more money by skipping that step entirely.

SV was exercising editorial discretion by moderating content and banning troublemakers, but free speech supporters have decided doing so violated their free rights. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. "Editorial discretion" by definition is a mean of forcing people into silence, which you're against. You want the crazies to be able to express themselves, so the modern social media landscape is what you want, because that's exactly what it optimizes for.

The context of this thread is specifically American-style free speech, which protects people from government interference in speech, but does not compel others to publish speech on your behalf.

I am criticizing SV for their choices, but I don't think they should be forced to do what I think is right.

Eh, not really. Before 1969, it was totally legitimate to pass laws restricting or even criminalizing speech, to an extent at least as severe as what prevails in Germany today. One of the first things our country did after adopting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts, which among other things outlawed criticism of the incumbent government. The Sedition Act was allowed to expire, and was never declared unconstitutional (though Jeffersonians believed it was).

It was only since the decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio that the First Amendment has been interpreted broadly enough to protect all speech that is not otherwise itself an illegal act (as in CSAM) or does not incite "imminent lawless action".

I really dislike this idea of it being a 'central American' value simply because that hasn't been the case since the founding of America. There have always been people who have full access to free speech and the rest of people have 'Free Speech*'. Hundreds of years of minorities being punished for saying the wrong thing or being in the wrong place while the strong and wealthy get away with whatever they want.

Even now that's the case where if you're wealthy you have more speech than others. You can call people all sorts of vile things and sic your fanbase on them, you can mouth off to police and if you want to you can sue people into the ground. The rest of us can get thrown in jail for vaguely insulting a man in blue's honor.

How quickly people forget that our political apparatus had a woman harassed and jailed for laughing at Jeff Sessons.

Free speech has absolutely been a central value, since the time of founding, as evidenced by its prominent spot in the 'Bill of Rights'. It hasn't always been fully respected, but for the most part the trends have been good.

Only in a few narrow places & times might someone be "thrown in jail for vaguely insulting a man in blue's honor", and those are typically undone when the full process runs.

The anecdote you share, with the important details filed-off, is that a woman was prosecuted not for merely "laughing at Jeff Sessions" but the more specific charge of disruptive behavior during a government hearing. Opinions differ as to whether he behavior rose to the level of prosecutable disruption, but an actual criminal jury of 12 citizens was somehow convinced to unanimously rule her behavior merited conviction. But then when the full legal process ran, an appelate judge called the conviction 'absurd', throwing out the jury's conviction.

Ultimately, that demonstrates that like in other countries, officials in the US can misuse their powers-in-the-moment to attempt some amount of speech punishment, sure. But further that in the US, you can appeal to 'free speech' as a defense, and thus escape punishment for things that might keep you punished in the UK & other somewhat-liberal democracies with lesser speech protections.

The entire legal system is designed to punish people from the moment of arrest through conviction. Just because a rational judge realized that the case was absurd does not make the hoops she had to go through any less arduous. For example officer writing you a bogus speeding ticket that you can successfully challenge in court still requires time and effort to challenge, moreso than the officer did issuing it and that's very frequently done to poorer individuals.

Which again, you ignore that we had (and in many places still have) an amount of people which simply did not have the same free speech rights that you say America was founded upon.

> The entire legal system is designed to punish people from the moment of arrest through conviction.

This is indeed true, and a problem, and if you have ideas for how it can be improved, I'd be all ears.

But, I've not found any country/region/system that doesn't have some level of this problem. The US's system, of required public formalities for certain charges to proceed, & certain guarantees of time limits, & avenues for release/acquittal, is pretty strong compared to anywhere else. (In the Netherlands, a software developer has been in custody for a couple months now without any specific charges/case being revealed to him or the public.)

And, it's kind of inherent to any system for there to be some margins-of-abusive-discretion that are hard to eliminate, and time-limited steps-in-a-judicial-process where unavoidable "punishment" comes even from a process that hasn't decided yet. So mentioning the mere existence of such unevenness doesn't really say anything, either way, about the relative value the US culture, or legal system, puts on free speech.

What does shed light on the value the US puts on free speech is whether such irreducible annoyances are larger or smaller, with respect to speech, than other countries and other eras. And at every step of US history, even dark days like say Wilson's persecution of WW1 draft-resisters, or Hoover's mid-20thC persecution of civil rights movements, the US had more space for speech, more defenses for those accused of speech-related offenses, and larger cultural/social support (in both legal/political action and the commercial 'blocking-and-tackling' of actually publishing & disseminating speech without outsider veto) than almost anywhere else.

That's where people should be able to see the real, high, & enduring value the US has always put on free speech, if not neurotically obsessed on only negative examples, & scattered hypocrisies, blinding them to relative-magnitudes.

If Americans have not consistently enjoyed equal free speech – but even in such inequality, almost all Americans had far more free speech than they'd have had anywhere else – then that's more a knock on the US' value of equality, while confirming its leading value of free speech.

Well put in the first few paras. All systems need discretion, which can be abused. Also it's important not to fixate on the bad, there's plenty of good.

The last 2, gets a bit self-congratulatory. Jim crow laws (until 1965). Emmet Till didn't get much rights to free wolf-whistling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till And plenty more.

"If Americans have not consistently enjoyed equal free speech [...] then that's more a knock on the US' value of equality"

If you don't have 'equal free speech' then you don't have 'free speech', full stop.

> If you don't have 'equal free speech' then you don't have 'free speech', full stop.

Not at all. Free speech is not binary.

More is better, & the cultures that have consistently had more speech tolerance than elsewhere - like the US, in its formal documents & actual practices – are showing that free speech is a more central value to them.

This seems a bit nonsensical to be because you cannot simply just put a gauge on free speech and say that the higher the gauge is the better.

If you had a country where 95% of individuals had absolute freedom of speech but 5% did not, is that more or less free than a country where 100% of people had near-absolute freedom of speech?

What about when those percentages collide? When the free speech of the haves results in the suppression of the have nots? And historically the freedom in US has been in theory and not in practice what with how it's been used to hunt down perceived communists, minorities and dissidents.

The best possible evidence against the idea that more == better is played out in the various sites that try to have absolute freedom of speech. The end result is that you get a large amount of people that others either do not want to associate with or get chased out by the rabid angry mass. Websites and forums form a sort of microculture that prove you need some guardrails to prevent the bus from going off the edge.

In addition to it not being binary, it's not reducible to single dimension, where something like your question could be calculated like a formula.

But yes, more free speech – in terms of being able to honestly express your opinions, without the threat of punishment by the state – is better. From any particular state of "absolute" or "near-absolute" free speech, giving some people extra freedom to speak without state punishment is an improvement.

We were talking about the US, as a polity/legal-system. Private forums can and will set their own standards. But the US public-sphere, and what the government can get away with punishing, has for centuries had world-leading free-speech guarantees.

You've conveniently passed over the fact that free speech could be very unequal in the US, pretty good for whites, maybe not so good for others. That 'not binary' part seems to mean also between whites/non-whites, no?

It's not binary in many dimensions.

Race is a far less salient variable affecting speech, in the US, than income or education.

Many of the US's most fearless speakers, often relying on our legal protections or cultural appreciation, especially with respect to criticizing the powerful, have been from categories of people that are otherwise economically disadvantaged.

And, their practice of free speech, aided by the underlying high value from the culture & legal system, has helped to correct those other inequities.

You say that people have been punished and jailed for simply saying the wrong thing… do you have any actual examples? The one example you gave, the woman who laughed at Jeff Sessions, had the conviction overturned and the charges dropped.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/08/562823691...

You don't have to be convicted to be punished. They knew that these charges wouldn't fly, but harassing someone, arresting them and forcing them to show up in court is still a massive burden on an individual and a drain of their money.

The mistake is assuming that the punishment begins upon conviction when going through the legal system is often punishment enough and a big chilling effect on free speech.

It appears to me that free speech is being phased out and replaced with SafeSpeech. Its presented like this: "It is actually more free because safe spaces are where people are free-est to speak their minds; free from bullying, etc." fwiw, I find this trend abhorrent, but I can't stop it.

I see you have met my countrymen and seen how they view the world.

Actually all but a couple of american's I've met have been very thoughtful, and open. The attitude that worries me is expressed online IME. I'll edit my post to say that.

Hate speech as a crime is very much a thing in the U.S.; people have been fired from jobs, suspended or expelled from school, even arrested.

On the one hand, there’s a long tradition of free speech absolutism, but on the other, also a long tradition of punishing speech. Then it ends up in court where usually it’s declared to be protected by the Bill of Rights.

Freedom needs to be re-litigated periodically.

> Hate speech as a crime is very much a thing in the U.S.; people have been fired from jobs, suspended or expelled from school, even arrested.

Isn't this some kind of mob rule basically? This is hard to avoid I think, but it is certainly detrimental to any society. It's at least something that this is not cast into legislation in the US (yet).

The other poster is wrong, the only thing listed that's indication of a crime (and even that isn't proof of a crime) is being arrested.

Nothing else is indication of any crime whatsoever.

As an American, I feel harassed and intimidated by your comment attacking people of my nationality. Perhaps I should report you to the police.

^ this.

There are a lot of things to criticize the US for, believing people should be able to speak their minds aint one of em.

Yes, we are better in that regard than any country that restricts speech more than us. Don't like what I just said? Don't care, I live in the US, where such things are allowed.

> ...believing people should be able to speak their minds aint one of em

And I agree. But that wasn't the point at all. Please re-read my post.

I value free speech too. But.

Free-speech absolutism is a position you might rethink if you had panzerkampfwagens rolling over your fields in living memory. Visit Auschwitz, then have a think.

And fwiw, there are limits to free speech in the US, too. You could get yourself arrested for shouting "Fire!" in a cinema. Does that bother you? Do you feel your rights are curtailed, if you cannot freely express your opinion that a cinema is on fire?

This has nothing to do with free-speech absolutism.

> You could get yourself arrested for shouting "Fire!" in a cinema.

Not only is that not true, the justice that quote is based off of later changed his mind.

---

> Visit Auschwitz, then have a think.

The US is not a perfect country by any means, but in this we are superior. Freedom is risky, the question is whether the curtailing of freedom is worth it.

No way in hell is it worth having the police show up at your door because of a meme image you shared on facebook.

American here. We draw the line correctly.

Our ancestors gambled their lives (fighting, killing, and sometimes dying to your ancestors) for these rights.

So, please understand, our belligerence is an aspect of our culture we've had since the beginning.

And if you ever get sick of your government's antics and want somewhere to go, you can always move here! :)

> American here. We draw the line correctly.

So no questioning it, no evidence or justification given, just a plain "we're right"[1]. You've made my point.

[1] and by implication "everyone else is wrong"

I at least gave you an explanation as to where the belief comes from. We're belligerents, plain and simple.

Perhaps we learned it from our parent nation.

And, you're right. Everyone else is wrong on this issue. Unfortunately, you're going to have to live with that fact...

It's nice to be reminded sometimes how 1776 was not just a religious or economic, but also a cultural split.

I find myself absolutely perplexed that there is available policing capacity for this, but not for solving things like scooter phone thief gangs and stolen motorcycles.

It's easier and less risky to go after thoughtcrime.

Going after hate speech also has a better long term outcome, as opposed to growth of radicalisation.

The police harrassment of Caroline Farrow for expressing opinions on Twitter is another example of a heavy-handed authoritarian injustice.

The latest one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmRrT_vhUG8

“Hate Speech” is going to become a catchall for authoritarian regimes, just as “terrorism” did post 9/11. It’s instructive to examine how the USA’s use of terrorism to pursue, first the perpetrators of 9/11, and then whoever we felt like, gave permission for the world to do the same. Note how Putin describes Ukraine as filled with terrorists.

"Terrorism" was the justification to allow US forces to torture detainees. It's not just the people they go after, it's the structural changes they justify.

I hate to interrupt your regularly scheduled dose of anti-Americanism, but "Hate Speech" was being punished across Europe long before the "War on Terror" began in the United States. Europeans did not, and do not, need prompting from the United States to act like fascists. All tyrants invariably seize upon whatever pretext is available to them to engage in plausibly-deniable acts of tyranny.

The UK has always seemed to be going down the path of 1984.

The third one is standing around with a gun claiming to be acting as law enforcement.

That’s a crystal clear threat of violence.

It's an air rifle. It's also clearly a joke.

Oi, you gotta loicense for that guv'nah?

https://preview.redd.it/mmksakh888t21.jpg?auto=webp&s=f4dc90...

there's a subtle difference between saying what you want and publishing what you want on a global platform that potentially can show it to billions of people.

Say it in a bar with your friends if you wanna make a stance or a joke, avoid global social networks.

Maybe UK is simply showing its true face, but exposing in public your ingenuity has never ended well.

There's a reason why McDonalds writes "Caution: Contents Hot" on their hot beverages.

Long story short: if you know sth can happen, you should try to prevent it, or you'll be considered part of the problem, even if only partially, the consequences could be bad.

EDIT: as explained here[1], the true story is a story of underestimating the risks.

Free speech on social private networks is not the same thing as free speech in person and it's absolutely not risk free.

People know that, but keep thinking "it won't happen to me" despite the fact TOS say very clearly what can and cannot be said and that a big "report" button is there for anyone to use.

nobody has ever been arrested for saying horrible things at the pub with their friends. Nobody would have ever said the same things on national TV. But suddenly we started thinking social networks are like the pub while they are more ubiquitous than the TV.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33145066

McDonalds caused a woman severe skin burns by providing dangerously hot coffee to try to keep customers from immediately drinking it and getting refills.

That's not the reason why.

The woman was deemed partially responsible for the burns, because she was, the real reason is that McDonalds knew that people burnt themselves before, but did nothing to inform to customers of the risks.

People know that stunts on social networks have been punished, but keep making them anyway.

Which is not exactly a smart move and doesn't limit anyone's free speech, I am still free to say the same things, just not in front of a WorldWide audience.

Social networks will report immediately any "not conforming" opinion to avoid being the next McDonalds, but on a global scale (billions in fines instead of the 640k dollars MD paid)

https://www.enjuris.com/blog/resources/mcdonalds-hot-coffee-...

Putting up a sign would not have saved them from that lawsuit, at the temperature they kept it 3rd degree burns can be caused within 3 seconds of contact.

> Putting up a sign would not have saved them from that lawsuit, at the temperature they kept it 3rd degree burns can be caused within 3 seconds of contact.

It would have prevented Stella Liebeck from even starting a lawsuit.

McDonalds coffee temperature is the same that it's commonly used for hot tea in England (on the lower side, to be precise)

The water temperature for black tea should be 90 to 98 C and for green tea around 80 C.

It's all about not warning customers of the risks involved in managing hot beverages (in England they are probably asking how is it possible that adult people can't handle hot water, but that's another story, for another time)

None of that is actually true.

explain.

please.

The temperature that coffee should be served at has nothing to do with the temperature that hot tea should be made at. Additionally, at the time that the woman got burnt, McDonalds was serving the coffee significantly hotter than they do today.

> The temperature that coffee should be served at

there is no such thing as "temperature the coffee should be served at"

hot tea is still served at an higher temperatures than coffee

your missing the point: don't use social networks as they ate are a private space, they are not and they even warned you about it.

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