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Comment by piker | Hacker News Reader

> While figures show that the total number of arrests for online posts fell to 9,700 last year, down from a record 13,800 in 2023...

https://freespeechunion.org/daily-mail-investigation-exposes...

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This is based on statistics for the Malicious Communications Act. That includes people sending, for example, threatening messages to an ex partner.

Not all of them are online posts, in fact probably a minority

That's what would be reasonably expected, but it's not backed up by the information.

> The total arrest figures are likely to be far higher because eight forces failed to respond to freedom of information requests or provided inadequate data, including Police Scotland, the second largest force in the UK. Some forces also included arrests for “threatening” messages, though these do not fall under the specified sections. [emphasis added]

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr... (https://archive.is/kC5x2#selection-3325.0-3325.335)

Thanks. That wasn't clear from the Mail article above.

But the Times article also says:

> A spokeswoman for Leicestershire police said crimes under Section 127 and Section 1 include “any form of communication” such as phone calls, letters, emails and hoax calls to emergency services.

So I think the categorisation is a mess, and probably not even consistent across forces

I have to say, it is a bit astonishing how much you are in a kind of bargaining stage of trying to rationalize how what is happening, is not actually happening, all while the trap doors are closing all around you even though very slowly.

Why do you think that is?

It is not just a British thing, because this ruling class tyranny is descending all across the western world, regardless of whether it is particularly egregious in the UK. Or should we maybe just start calling it Airstrip One at this point, the AO?

For me at least (different person), the term "speech offences" has been so captured by the far-right who think publicly advocating for the burning down of buildings populated with minorities is totally fine, but calling someone racist is beyond the pale. Whereas, at least from my own experience, progressives tend to use phrases related to expression, eg, protests.

And so when I hear "speech offences", my immediate thought is to question the premise: Are we talking about people publicly advocating for mass violence? Are we talking about bullying or harassment? Are we talking about a private conversation? Are we talking about a group chat? Are we talking about hate speech? Are we talking about defamation? Are we talking about "fighting words"? Etc. Context matters.

For all the talk I see online advocating for social media to be considered a public space, I've yet to see anyone really grasp the consequences of that: have any of them tried yelling out in a public space that they should burn down a populated building? That won't go down well, and rightly so. It has never been okay to do that.

People facing consequences for broadcasting their depraved bloodlust online doesn't concern me. What concerns me is the extent to which protests against genocide are being suppressed, with police looking for any minor infraction to pounce upon, but we have video of people saying to police "I support the genocide" to make a point, which the police don't bat an eye at. That scares me.

For you the issue is a left right issue and if the opinion matches yours it is acceptable and seen in a positive light but if it's the other side you have no tolerance.

You will never have free speech just controlled speech with alternating people in power. Which I think is a worse outcome because the people in power will never allow controlled speech against them.

> For you the issue is a left right issue and if the opinion matches yours it is acceptable and seen in a positive light but if it's the other side you have no tolerance.

When you remove all content and context from what is actually being said and done, then yes, this is fairly accurate, but it's also an entirely meaningless framing. But you have fallen into the trap of thinking I only support protests that I agree with, which is the usual response for these kinds of discussions, sadly. If you want your climate-contrarian protest, by all means do so. Unironically do Straight Pride if that's what you want. I believe protest, and expression more generally, is a fundamental right. But what you're doing here is (to use a hyperbolic comparison) accusing me of hypocrisy because I'm okay with interpretive dance but not murder, even though they're both just actions. It reminds me of 2016 Reddit where slurs were "just soundwaves, bro".

We don't have American-style freedom of speech, nor should we. We have freedom of expression instead because we have very personal experience within our very recent history what unfettered hatred does to a continent. Attempting to import American-style freedom of speech will genuinely destroy this country, we are already seeing it happen.

Someday we need to kill this myth, the wave of fascisms that appeared in Europe (Italy, Germany, Spain, Romania) are more of a cultural and economic reaction to the destruction of the Great War and not due to "unlimited free speech".

Free speech does not amplify or cultivate hate, it lets it fester in dark areas until it explodes when a crisis happens (which is what is happening currently).

Free speech and open discourse serves as a pressure valve release and self-correcting mechanism where by impopular or "untolerable" but common opinions have to be dealt with i.e the migration backlash in Europe

Protests are pressure valves, not tweets.

Please tell me how did the recent wave of Gen-Z protests start, hw did the Arab spring start?

Tweets (and other censored social media) for better or for worse have been at the center of impactful political movements and protests

Again, you are stripping all context and content. You are pretending that protest organising and calling for the burning down of a building populated with asylum seekers are the same thing. I vehemently reject this facetious framing.

You're conflating legitimate criticism with incitement. The police record suggest the opposite.

Take the example *Bernadette Spofforth, 55*, she shared false information that the attacker was an asylum seeker, adding "If this is true, all hell will break loose." (not false btw) Deleted it, apologized. She still got arrested, held 36 hours, and then *released without charge because of insufficient evidence*.

No call for violence, "misinformation", which she retracted when corrected. Yet she still was arrested during the crackdown. The state used riot prosecutions to sweep up misinformation, political speech and "hatred" on one swoop not just incitement. Spofforth's arrest (and quiet release) shows they criminalized *any speech near the riots*, then kinda sorted legality later.

You're using the retarded Lucy Connolly to justify arresting people like Spofforth (which has opinion closer to the average). That's the poisoning-the-well: conflate extremists with moderates sharing concerns, arrest both, then claim all arrested speech was violent incitement.

You also seem to not take into account that *the UK has built the legal apparatus to enable this overreach:*

- *Public Order Act 1986*: Criminalizes speech where "hatred" is "likely" to be stirred up. You're criminal based on how others react.

- *Online Safety Act 2023*: Forces platforms to remove "harmful" content or face £18 million fines.

- *Non-Crime Hate Incidents*: Since 2014, police record speech "perceived" as hateful, even when no crime occurred. 133,000+ recorded. No evidence, no appeals, appears on background checks. Court ruled this unlawful for "chilling effect" in 2021 yet police continue anyway.

In total it ends up with 12,000+ annual arrests for speech (30/day), fourfold increase since 2016. 666,000 police hours on non-crimes. Broad laws + complaint-driven policing = arrest first, determine legality never.

Free speech protects conditional statements about policy during crises or when the people has something to say to its elites. The 36-hour detention without charges proves the suppression.

> You're conflating legitimate criticism with incitement.

You should tell the right wingers that. Here's some of the right-wing sources I found when searching Ground News for some articles about Lucy Connolly, the woman who publicly advocating for the burning down of hotels housing asylum seekers:

- "British Mother Jailed for Tweet: ‘I Was Starmer’s Political Prisoner’" (The European Conservative) (https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/british-mothe...)

- "Lucy Connolly considers legal action against police after being jailed for race hate tweet" (LBC) (https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/lucy-connolly-first-interview-...)

- "‘Silencing the right!’ Free speech boss rages over Lucy Connolly’s ‘absolutely heartbreaking’ admission" (GB News) (https://www.gbnews.com/news/free-speech-lucy-connolly-admiss...)

You may notice a theme amongst these articles about how "it was just a tweet" and "she's a political prisoner" and "calculated move to suppress conservative viewpoints on immigration". This is what the right does. I'm not conflating legitimate criticism with incitement, they are, and they're using their massive media empires to spread this conflation.

This is just going to fix itself with more speech, right?

I actually do too, the issue is that in today’s wacko world the defense of Free Speech which in the early 2000s was a domain of the left/center-left, now has been abandonded due to the notion of “hate-speech” and opportunistically taken by the right (even tho many like MAGA will drop it the moment it stops being politically convenient i.e expulsion of students being critical of Israel actions).

A lot of those are propaganda peddlers who would drop the charade the moment someone on their political opposite side finds themselves in the same position (they keep crying about statements of Palestine and anti-semitism). I agree that they are stupid in their defense of Lucy Connely who literally and unrepentably pushed to “burn the asylum centers”, and that they are willfully conflating the issue to further their agenda.

The issue is both you and the retarded conservatives uses the situation to push their agendas, and as a counterpoint while they have media empires the left-wing political side also has media conglomerates pushing their ideas (BBC having a center-left slant).

No, the issue is going to fix itself with free speech, when no side is persecuted and better quality and rational discourse can arise and not be censored or overtaken by the extremes. Currently the only sane takes on many issues like immigration, economy or free speech exist only in the internet ghettos hidden from the larger public.

> which in the early 2000s was a domain of the left/center-left

Could you elaborate on that? I'm aware of the Lib Dems championing changes to the law to remove restrictions on "insulting" speech, but even so, they're not left/centre left. There's a joke that they're just yellow tories.

> now has been abandonded due to the notion of “hate-speech”

That's untrue. Stirring up or inciting racial hatred was made an offence by the Public Order Act 1986. And while it's true that stirring up religious hatred and homophobic hatred were added to that in 2006 and 2008 respectively, this did not invent the notion of hate speech. Lord Sumption, who was on our Supreme Court, said that the traditional line in English law was between words that merely outrage and words that would cause a breach of the peace amongst reasonable people (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=END98dJwpCg&t=1306s). Stirring up racial, religious, or homophobic hatred would seem to conform to that.

> BBC having a center-left slant

That's also untrue. The BBC participated in the pillorying of Corbyn; the BBC gave JK Rowling a Russel Prize for her anti-trans manifesto (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55350905); the whole debacle with the "We're being pressured into sex by some trans women" article (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4buJMMiwcg); the BBC downplaying Gaza (eg: killed vs died, not allowing the term "genocide", demanding anyone critical of Israel to ritualistically condemn Hamas, etc); the BBC preventing pro-Palestinian audience members for Question Time (https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/10/03/bb...). And speaking of Question Time, how many times has Farage (or other Reformer) been a panellist now? And this is just the stuff I've personally witnessed and noted down. The BBC is establishment media through and through: the BBC is not suddenly centre left because there's gay people in Eastenders.

> the BBC gave JK Rowling a Russel Prize for her anti-trans manifesto

It wasn't an "anti-trans manifesto", but a thoughtful explanation of her reasons for speaking out on the sex and gender issue, where she discusses her concerns for women's rights and safety, the well-being of vulnerable children, and how important it is to be allowed to speak freely on this topic. Plenty of people on the left (and centre-left) agree with her too.

As with all her work, it was very well written, which the article you linked rightly acknowledges.

Oh hello, welcome to this 18-comment deep thread. This is the second time now that I've mentioned JK Rowling's transphobia and had a randomer show up and comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37058027). You, like them, also only speak about JKR on your profile. How curious.

All that link shows is you have a long-running habit of disparaging outspoken feminists.

It's shows that JKR, a billionaire, has an army of sleeper accounts willing to jump at any mention of her nakedly virulent transphobia. Second-wave feminists would deplore her bio-essentialism. She is an anti-feminist.

Second-wave feminists like Germaine Greer, Janice Raymond and Sheila Jeffreys?

Have you never encountered a generalisation in your entire life?

EDIT: Fun tidbits:

- Sheila Jeffreys thinks that "any woman who takes part in a heterosexual couple helps to shore up male supremacy by making its foundations stronger".

- Janice Raymond thinks that "all transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves".

- Germaine Greer published a book of some 200 pictures of young boys "to advance women's reclamation of their capacity for and right to visual pleasure".

Truly the height of second-wave feminism right here.

Point is that second-wave feminism, and radical feminism in particular, centred on recognising sex as the basis of women's oppression under patriarchy. This led to advocacy for women-only spaces to protect against male violence and predation. Which is what JKR's position is: a continuation of second-wave radical feminism.

Partially correct but you are conflating the movement fighting for biological rights (eg: reproductive rights) as it being bio-essentialist. And there certainly was infighting about trans people within second-wave feminism (eg: feminist sex wars), but then there's also intersex people. Second-wave feminists more generally did not have the kind of one-drop rule towards womanhood as you do, where someone could have lived their entire life as a woman, be perceived as a woman, experienced misogyny as a woman, experience patriarchy as a woman, suffered domestic abuse as a woman, have breasts and a vulva, etc, but once some test determines them to be intersex, you disqualify them from womanhood entirely and cast them as male. Second-wave feminists would not have done this. In fact, I believe even Greer deplored surgeries being performed on infants to make them comply with society's perception of the binary.

Second-wave feminism explicitly challenged and rejected biological essentialism, which is the misogynistic belief that women are biologically suited to roles like housework, taking care of a husband, raising children and so on, and should do that instead of making any other choices in life. If you are familiar with JKR's feminist views you should know that she isn't bio-essentialist. Very much the opposite.

Also, you're responding to an argument I didn't make. I said nothing about intersex people or any "one-drop rule". My point was that second-wave radical feminism centred sex as the basis of women's oppression under patriarchy, leading to advocacy for women-only spaces. Which is exactly what JKR is defending.

That is the continuity I'm highlighting. It was in response to your earlier comment:

> Second-wave feminists would deplore her bio-essentialism. She is an anti-feminist.

> Also, you're responding to an argument I didn't make. I said nothing about intersex people or any "one-drop rule"

@Defletter can see your comment history, as can I!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46176554

When I noticed you gave up on our argument, I thought I'd see what else you were up to. It seems your only goal on this site is to defend JKR. Unfortunately, JKR's views don't actually make sense, which explains why none of your arguments in defense of her make sense either.

I was rate-limited so didn't reply. And when I went back to that thread the next day and remembered you were pretending not to know what the male sex is or human sex development works, decided not to bother wasting any more time.

> Second-wave feminism explicitly challenged and rejected biological essentialism

Exactly, hence why JKR's depraved dogma is anti-feminist: the idea that women can be disqualified from their womanhood for not being biologically pure enough is aggressively bio-essentialist. See JKR's disgusting reaction to Imane Khelif where mere rumour was enough for JKR to disqualify her womanhood entirely and call her a "a man beating a women in public for entertainment". And as konmok as said in their comment: you were all too willing to do the same in another comment thread. This is exceedingly cruel, hateful, anti-feminist, and not worthy of respect within a civil and democratic society. I will no longer be responding to this level of inhumanity.

EDIT: Sidenote, you claiming to have been rate-limited despite having a pretty sparse profile is very funny and implies that you're either running multiple accounts (probably to defend JKR and her cronies) or because you're thrumming the API like nobody's business trying to find any criticism of JKR. Or both. It could be both.

That's not what bio-essentialist means.

Khelif is male, and that was already known when JKR made her remarks, which were accurate. It is certainly not anti-feminist to be opposed to males in women's sports, especially not a sport where they get to repeatedly pummel female competitors.

If you want to see cruel and hateful, perhaps consider your complete lack of empathy for the women adversely affected by this. I suppose in your mind, the fact they are female means they are of no importance. Same as your miserable attitude towards feminist women as demonstrated in your comments above.

Figured I'd add that the BBC has had to apologise recently for Question Time posing a question to the panellists about a stat of 1 in 3 children in Glasgow having English as a second language, but the text prompt they showed on screen lied, saying that 1 in 3 children in Glasgow are not fluent in English. That's a pretty substantial change.

It's not very centre-left of the BBC to aid Farage in his racism, and of course there's a Reform politician there to have the first and last words about it. Keep in mind that this is a Scottish episode, with the leader of the Scottish National Party at Westminster, the leader of Scottish Labour, the leader of Scottish Conservatives, a Scottish journalist (there's usually one or two non-politicians on the panel) who did a lot of indyref coverage. And despite Reform not winning a single seat for Scotland in the 2024 General Election, or in the last Scottish Parliament election in 2021, they apparently always need to give Reform a voice on everything so they shoehorned him onto this panel.

This all just screams centre-left.

FWIW - Bernadette Spofforth invented a fictitious Muslim asylum seeker that had arrived by small boat as the perpetrator of an awful act of violence towards small children. She ended her post with "I'm done with the mental 'health excuse'. You should be as well!" Shortly afterwords, mosques and migrant hotels were attacked in the worst race riots the UK has seen in years - fuelled, at least in part, by her disinformation.

It wasn't a retweet and it was only deleted - some 10 hours later - when the media started asking her about the source of the name she had created.

The idea that she was simply expressing legitimate concern is ludicrous.

Many people share your viewpoint on the left and right. It's natural to support free speech for what you agree and censor what you don't. It's part of living in a left or right ghetto of thought.

Take a step back. The right is in power you are not allowed to speak your ideas. The left is in power you can say anything that supports their agenda.

What you can never do is speak against the government right or left

Why would you want that? Seems like the worst of all worlds.

Isn't the history you are trying to not repeat a history of controlled speech where the wrong party got elected or got in power? Why won't this happen again and again?

> It's natural to support free speech for what you agree and censor what you don't.

Y'all really don't make a convincing case for freedom of speech when you cannot even read. Let me repeat: "You have fallen into the trap of thinking I only support protests that I agree with, which is the usual response for these kinds of discussions, sadly. If you want your climate-contrarian protest, by all means do so. Unironically do Straight Pride if that's what you want. I believe protest, and expression more generally, is a fundamental right."

Maybe I am reading these wrong, but it doesn’t appear to me these sources indicate that a significant number of people are being arrested for “speech offenses,” which I’m guessing you are using as shorthand for statements akin to those that would fall under “free speech” in the US. If I’m not seeing it or I am not correctly defining what you mean, feel free to correct me. I’m having to make some assumptions here

It can be hard to wrap your head around it from the US, but many of these are people that are in fact being arrested for writing posts on social media, e.g.,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-6... (arrested for post wearing a Manchester Arena bomber costume)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-60930670 (arrested for posting "the only good British soldier is a dead British soldier" from Scotland)

that would be categorically protected speech in the US.

And in many other countries those would get you prosecuted for hate speech or incitement to violence.

The lie here is you've picked too examples of atrocious behavior, but you're trying to pretend that actually all the rest are just people posting dank memes and so "it could happen to you!!".

Those examples are completely inoccuous to my sensibilities. Of course, there are plenty of countries that lack the broad speech protections Americans enjoy, but one doesn't expect such curtailments of personal liberty in a fellow English-speaking western "liberal" democracy.

The first example was "man arrested for wearing the exact same outfit as a man who intentionally blew himself up, killing 22 people". It's not "he was wearing the same chequered shirt!" either. As a UK citizen... I don't see how that fits under "free speech", lol

Even with "freedom of speech", you do not have "freedom from fascism" built into that, case in point, Wikipedia has multiple pages documenting both the current US administration's attitude towards trans people (that, in Charlie Kirk's words, we are "abominations unto god" that should be "taken care of" "as in the 50s/60s", which can only be taken to mean lynching), as well as the attitude of the US presidency towards democracy

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14290 (were PBS and NPR "biased"?)

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

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/25/transg...

Freedom to choose clothing wouldn't fall under any version of freedom of speech?

I would would work with your fellow citizens to change that.

I think the issue here isn't "freedom of speech", its that people who claim to want "freedom for speech" are either using it as a shield to say vile things to other people, or they feel that "freedom of speech" is the only thing one needs to guard against fascism.

The resulting difficulty is that the former is demonstrably true, and the former is demonstrably false.

> It can be hard to wrap your head around it from the US,

Come on. Was that necessary? I understand what we are talking about, I am saying none of those articles indicate that there is some huge thing going on where people in the UK are being arrested by the tens of thousands for irreverent memes or whatever. The issue is not my understanding, it’s the handwaving and vague generalizations that are causing issues. It’s coming across as fear mongering and I am looking for clarity.

I don’t think you understand. Either of those arrests are unconscionable by American standards. Most U.S. folks would be shocked to ever see such a thing, so it’s necessary to first show it to level-set that non-US jurisdictions don’t have any concept like the 1st Amendment. It wasn’t a slight in any way.

It was to say: even a single arrest on those grounds would be national news in the U.S. and quickly over turned by any circuit in the judiciary.

I feel like we are talking at cross purposes here and this all feels very broad, so I’m still not entirely sure what you are driving at other than “in the UK people are being silenced and arrested for what I consider to be acceptable speech” in some general sense. I don’t know what the line is, I don’t know what the numbers are, I really don’t have any sense of the scale or specifics of your claim.

I was responding to the initial comment at first: that upwards of 10,000 people are being arrested annually now in the UK for irreverent posts online and the like. The sources that were shared do not show that. Now you’re saying it’s really about any single incident being unacceptable and how an American can’t fathom it.

Do you see why I’m having trouble following this conversation?

Yes, I think we'll have continued difficulty reconciling this understanding.

It's almost impossible to get arrested for posting something that isn't CSAM or literal state secrets on Twitter in the US. Even so-called "hate speech" is broadly protected in the US by the First Amendment. In fact the American Civil Liberties Union (which is loathed by the American right) has gone to bat and litigated on behalf of the KKK of all organizations, for example, to protect those rights.

If you send "menacing" notes to someone, that can be a part of a larger crime like harassment, assault or stalking, but as noted in the chain, that's not what's being measured here.

So the fact that people are being arrested at all for tweets is not "what I consider to be acceptable speech" but in fact what the US generally considers to be protected speech. Any number above 0 that doesn't reference child porn is infinitely more than you'd expect to see in the US. That's the difficulty we're having.

[Edit: I understand US != UK. The American flag only flies in the embassy here. I just wanted to provide the context of those arrests and these numbers to US readers who will find them surprising.]

My wife in the USA had semi-anonymous texts send to her personal over a course of 2 years. They included her home address, her mother's home address with a picture of the home, and they stated that they would kill her and anyone she loved.

She never saw justice for it. The police said there was nothing they could do, despite having the phone number it came from, because it was across state lines.

The texts stop, and we suspect that it coincided with a specific person who went to jail for a year or so for unrelated offences around the time that the texts stopped.

That person is still out there.

How many arrests does it take to chill free speech?

How many were for politcal speech as opposed to say threatening to murder someone?

I would say even one is too many.

The law was written in such a way intentionally to suppress speech. People who wrote it ain’t stupid.

Indeed. The success of even one such prosecution means that the second someone in government wants someone out of the way, they can efficiently be imprisoned for anything rising to the level of... "offensive."

"offensive" actually has a relatively solid definition based on how judges have ruled on it in the past. This includes hate-mongering against protected characteristics, which I see a lot of from the USA right now.

Can you share this definition of “offensive” you mentioned?

You're loving this.

> I would say even one is too many.

Well, is the number > 0?

Huge numbers are for political speech. It's not just prosecutions. Child protection is abused to force far left wing beliefs on the population.

A former Marine was charged with inciting racial hatred after describing some migrants as “scumbags” and “psychopaths” in a 12-minute video posted on Facebook following the murders of three children in Southport, which sparked riots around the country. He was then banned from coaching his own daughter's football club. A jury cleared him in 17 minutes, but Wales is run by the left so they kept the coaching ban in place because they believe right wing people are a threat to children.

In another case a teacher was banned from working with children after telling a Muslim child that "Britain is still a Christian state"

There are lots of cases like this. Especially if you expand to Europe. The German Chancellor has personally prosecuted thousands of speech cases against people who insulted him. Merkel established a general rule against insulting politicians so now people get police visits and their devices confiscated for saying things like such and such a politician is a dumbass.

> He was then banned from coaching his own daughter's football club. A jury cleared him in 17 minutes, but Wales is run by the left so they kept the coaching ban in place because they believe right wing people are a threat to children.

Who is the "they" in this? The football club? If the situation is essentially that he called certain groups scumbags, but the footbal club has members of that group, its not surprising he would be banned.

Being rude gets you banned from things. I don't see a problem with that. He wasn't thrown in jail, he said something that offended some people and as a result they decided they didn't like him anymore. Freedom of association is also freedom to chose not to associate with people you don't like.

> In another case a teacher was banned from working with children after telling a Muslim child that "Britain is still a Christian state"

I mean, that sounds like a dick thing to say to a child or to anyone. And not particularly true (yes there are some vestiges with the church of england, but you are allowed to be any religion in england)

Was that person prosecuted or just fired?

> The German Chancellor has personally prosecuted thousands of speech cases against people who insulted him.

I highly doubt it.

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/chancellor-friedrich-merz-has-fi...

> Not all of them

Do you understand the concept of a slippery slope? Anyone being arrested for online posts is too many from a free speech absolutist pov.

Free speech absolutism is a nonsensical position.

A car without gas is still a car, but you need to work to get it anywhere.

I thought Daily Mail was close to tabloid status (or a bit above). Aren’t they banned from being a citation on Wikipedia?

The Daily Mail is definitely tabloid, although some might describe it as a comic. There are reasons why Wikipedia doesn't allow it as a source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...

> There are reasons why Wikipedia

Wikipedia by itself is not a reliable source [0].

[0] https://en.ejo.ch/public-relations/manipulation-wikipedia

It is by no means a good publication, but at the same time being accepted as a citation on Wikipedia or not is not necessarily a particularly objective measure of quality. I recommend reading https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik... for the critical perspective on Wikipedia's integrity in this regard.

The Daily Mail is frequently referred to as either 'The Daily Fail' or 'The Daily Heil' (referring to the fact they supported Oswald Mosley and his fascist ideals, and remain very right wing). It is not a quality publication by any means.

TFA: https://review.gale.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/hurrah-fo...

They are a trash paper so skepticism is warranted but care should be taken not to dismiss facts just because of who reports them. Thankfully, we don't have to depend on the word of the Daily Mail for evidence that the UK doesn't value the ideal of free speech and are far too comfortable punishing and silencing online speech. It's a problem, and it makes their efforts to tie people's online activity to an individual worrying.

Best reply of siblings, by far.

It's a chipwrapper.

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