Sleepwalking? The UK has a fine and longstanding tradition of censorship. $current year is no exception.
It's this Libel and Defamation law that has often contributed to the allegations of censorship. Fundamentally some of this is built into British culture, and is significantly different to US culture where "free speech" rules supreme. But it's the bleeding of US culture into that of the UK though the media+internet that leads to a more vocal debate around these issues than before.
To quote form the Wikipedia article below:
"English defamation law puts the burden of proof on the defendant, and does not require the plaintiff to prove falsehood. For that reason, it has been considered an impediment to free speech in much of the developed world."
The world is so much more connected now it's inevitable that cultural and legal differences will reduce and some sort of equilibrium will be found.
Exactly the same in Austria. Often politicians and even shitty businesses use the libel law to get undesirable negative information about them removed from public spaces
An MP was called a "corrupt traitor" on Facebook and Facebook was forced to remove that comment under the libel law.
Often businesses will force Google, Kununu and other websites where people can leave reviews, to remove the negative ones under the libel law, that even doctor's practices do it.
Basically, your not allowed to air the dirty laundry of the rich and powerful unless you have bulletproof hard evidence, wich you can never really get as the GDPR and other strong privacy laws make legal evidence gathering nearly impossible by individuals.
This statement seems true for the vast majority of patients (although not the part where government prevents people from sharing their thoughts).
If you want to cause a massive, expensive and all consuming drama, physically hurt someone and then tell them that they are wrong and you didn’t.
It’s surprisingly how often this is done.
I was more meaning that from the patient’s perspective, it’s hard to tell the difference.
It helps that I live in NZ where you can’t sue very easily for injury, and most medical errors are covered by a national insurance scheme which applies to everyone.
When one doctor says "it is some muscular spasm, take painkiller and wait" and other one remove stones from my ureter (true story), I know that first one didn't give me good medical service, for sure.
You can be so posh that you accuse the current PM of raping a dead pig's head in the widest circulating tabloid and face absolutely no consequences.
I was under the impression that there were no consequences because it had actually happened?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2015/oct/0...
"The thing to point out about that story is that there is no need for burden of proof on a colourful anecdote where we’re quite upfront about our own reservations about whether to take it seriously."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Anthem_(Black_M...
I'm not saying it was a conspiracy, but I am saying that it's the kind of plausible deniability I'd aim for if I was writing a story about the British Government wanting to get away with an exo-legal punishment.
(Exo-legal punishment sounds like something from the 40K universe :) )
Oh sure your right to say "I'm going to blow up a school" is of course protected. Say "I'm going to shoot the president" though and off to jail.
Want to run an advert that someone thinks it false? Nope. Print some stories the government doesn't like? nope. Draw a picture of Lisa Simpson being screwed by Rupert Murdoch as a symbol of the collapse of the quality of the simpsons? Off to jail for you
And of course there's the whole mess of copyright, trademarks and patents which infringe on your right to speech
Taboo is a UK stable food, and it goes hand in hand with censorship.
In fact, with the current political and economical situation, I'm surprised it's not getting worse. The Finger would be tempting to create in a time of crisis.
The only mainstream platform now setting itself up to become the exception to this is the one platform that since a few weeks gets consistently attacked by the establishment: Twitter.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/07/twitter-w...
I bet you'd get banned for impersonating anyone on twitter, not just Musk. Or was that not happening?
> Great to see free speech finally thriving on Twitter now that Musk has taken over!!
> See but Musk is banning people for making fun of him, even accounts clearly labeled as "parody".
> Hmm sure, but then again does parody really fall under free speech?
Dear god
--
Free speech is free speech. It's not "you're free to say things I like", especially as defined by some slightly-deranged billionaire CEO. Plus, parody is the bread and butter of comedians making fun of politicians since at least ancient rome.
For what's worth, Musk had already been notorious before for attempting to silence those critical of him. And let's not even get into the union-busting stuff (free speech to hurl abuse at trans people online, but not to organize collective action!).
I'm sure some other people were banned for unlabelled parodying accounts under the new rule too, but they're busy stopping people using labels as obvious as "Elon Musk (Parody)" too...
https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-users-criticizing-mu...
But there was more notably a wave of people being permanently banned for changing their display name to Elon Musk, a previously accepted behavior on Twitter:
https://time.com/6229960/twitter-bans-accounts-elon-musk-imp...
The platform where Nazis can say what they want but people mocking Our Lord Musk are suspended? No thanks, I prefer free speech.