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Comment by tasn | Hacker News Reader

This, and other similar legislation, serve as a constant reminder of why the American founding fathers had to revolt against tyranny, and why constitution amendments like the 1st and 4th exist. The 4th in particular was written as a response to a British law similar to Chat Control (writs of assistance).

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And then you got the patriot act.

That was terrible. But then the NSA just started surveilling everything illegally anyway, laws be damned.

I was just pointing out that the 4th amendment is not really helping the americans with tyranny and all the related stuff :)

Sadly doesn't seem to make much difference, though. If anything the UK is less authoritarian than the US now.

It's hard to compare US and EU internet freedom because a person usually spends most of their life in one place and is clueless about the life in other.

I've never lived in US, were there any cases of ISPs blocking websites in USA? Even DNS-level blocking counts

I've lived both in the US and the UK.

The US has the 5th amendment protecting you from self-incrimination, while in the UK you can go to prison for not divulging your encryption password (even if you forgot it!).

The US doesn't have ISP/DNS level blocking for all I'm aware of, but there's the ultimate blocking that sometimes does happen (FBI raiding your servers, even if outside of the US).

The US has the 1st amendment protecting speech, while in the UK people routinely get arrested for social media posts.

Maybe there are areas where the UK is better about privacy/freedom than the US, but no examples immediately come to mind.

come on guys, stop upvoting me and answer the question please

How many people are arrested for social media posts and other speech in each country?

It's actually quite hard to say, as there are no official figures on arrests specifically for social media posts in either country. And lot of the specific cases that people point to in the UK (e.g. Lucy Connolly) have parallels in the US:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/facebook-com...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7pyjxjxrvo

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/federal-agents-mon...

(The figures that the American right give for "arrests for social media posts" in the UK are actually figures from certain police forces for arrests under various pieces of online communication legislation, many of which have nothing to do with social media.)

To be fair the other country routinely deploys military against citizens, and deports non-citizens for speech.

A guy was arrested for a joke he posted on social media about Charlie Kirk. He spent some time in jail but ended up winning a lawsuit. So the answer isn't exactly 0 in the US

At least I have still have a 2nd amendment - and, at least for now, still post on social media without getting a knock on my door.

> and, at least for now, still post on social media without getting a knock on my door.

That's called "luck".

A friend of mine did likewise, and got a knock, then handcuffs, then a trial. He was acquitted because everything he said was allowed under the first amendment. In fact, several academics had published the same/similar stuff he did and not had any problems (or ever worried about them). But he was of the wrong race/religion...

There was never a time in the 20th-21st century where you can practice your 1st amendment rights and be absolutely sure you wouldn't get a knock on your door.

> That's called "luck".

I think it's actually called statistics. In 2026, it would seem I'm statistically less likely to get arrested for a social media post in the US than the UK. I mean it's not like the reason is hidden. Arrests typically require crossing into narrow unprotected categories under the First Amendment: true threats (Virginia v. Black standard), incitement to imminent lawless action (Brandenburg v. Ohio), or specific crimes like credible harassment, cyberstalking, or extortion.

It's quite a bit different than the UK's hate speech laws and the comparative result makes complete sense.

Got a link for those UK stats? Last time I went looking, even a Parliamentary report expressed that the stats are difficult to find, because the crime is eg malicious communications which covers a lot of acts.

Your links in another comment do not contain nearly enough detail to support the argument you're attempting to make. The 2 laws mentioned therein are broad and could cover many acts.

It's like a newspaper looking at the statistics for murder and creating a story that murder by asphyxiation with a pillow is on the rise.

n.b. I am not disagreeing that the police are policing social media. It's obviously an easy target. But we should be careful of newspapers pushing narratives, by asking for precise data

Well, that presents a problem when the news organizations that did investigate are just outright dismissed. The Times did a FOI request and are the ones who published the 12,183 figure which ultimately demonstrated the massive increase year over year.

The fact that there were signed petitions, two reports from supposably untrustworthy news organizations (that I could fine, there's probably more), and that it's been discussed at the national level multiple times, will either convince someone that it's 100% fabricated if they lean one way politically or that it's true if they lean the other way.

More and more I've found that it has nothing to do with data anymore. People will just ignore whatever isn't suitable to their beliefs.

You don't have the data on arrests specifically over social media posts, because they don't exist, so you chose to dismiss my reply and attempt an ad hominem.

I am not leaning one way or the other 100%, as indicated in my earlier reply. You are just reading what you want to read

I agree when there is not precise data available, inferences can be made from other data, but you must not state things like "statistically less likely to get arrested for a social media post in the US than the UK" when you don't have the actual, relevant statistics.

If you wish to argue with statistics, you must present them. And they will be cross examined, as is right and proper.

It was an observation, based on my own experiences, of how more and more people are dismissive based on their existing preferences. A refrain if you might. I have no idea what you believe or what your motivations are and I wasn't trying to guess.

But I digress. I'm the only one who has even attempted to provide any sort of data in this thread - which is typical of HN. Cast doubt and force the other party to continue to provide information until some unstated goal is satiated (and I often find the goal tends to move as well). It's a brilliant tactic, basically no effort and you can continue to feel confident in your assumptions. I miss when conversations were reciprocal.

Luck is statistical :-)

Then we agree that it's not unreasonable for me to feel confident I am unlikely to get arrested in the US over a social media post than in the UK, which is the whole point I was making all along.

For you, yes.

But not for some other folks in the US.

If you want to invoke statistics, I'm sure 99% of UK citizens are confident they won't get arrested over a social media post either. They probably worry about it a lot less than you would if you moved there.

Well, sure, I tend to ground my feelings about matters in statistics. If others don't do that, then it makes total sense they might feel worried about it. But I mean there's entire groups of people saying, quite loudly, that they don't like the social media arrests and how they feel draconian. You don't really need to "guess" about a sentiment. Clearly enough people are concerned that it's being talked about at a national level. I'm not aware of anything similar, or to the same degree, happening in the US.

https://web.archive.org/web/20251231145954/https://www.theti...

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

Also, see E-petition 728715, which had 190,000 signatures from concerned citizens. Your 99% statistic is clearly going against the data.

190,000 is less than 1%, and anything from The Daily Mail is suspect anyway.

You seem to be trying to knock down a straw man, as I never claimed it was worse in the US.

No, was just pushing back at the idea that the social media arrest isn't a concern to 99% of the British population. Typically 190,000 is considered the floor because there's a wide margin of people either too busy or too scared to sign their signature. Same is true in the U.S.

But sure, obviously we're never going to agree here. I've provided my logic/evidence and you're not convinced. Fair enough. I'm content to let others review the same evidence and form their own opinions on the matter.

Tens of millions of Americans, usually supporters of the 2nd, have openly declared that having a firearm on you while at a protest is a crime punishable by death, and have done nothing to stand up against Trump, who has openly declared his hostility to the 2nd amendment multiple times now.

Bringing a rifle to a protest you expect to get hot, brandishing it about, and then shooting someone in self defense is perfectly fine, but having an every day carry firearm, getting held down by the president's personal paramilitary org, and being shot execution style is apparently fine.

I'm sick and tired of the stupid claims about how important the 2nd is while the very advocates of it only bring it up to talk about how much they want to shoot democrats.

There's idiots on all sides. Plenty of sane people who are too busy working and raising families instead of loudly participating in politics that still hold a balanced view on the subject.

I can hold the situation you cited as an example that should be shown in training in how not to handle a situation like that while at the same time vehemently pushing back against the bureaucrats trying to disarm me. It's why I've always identified as an independent my whole life.

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