Comment by brigandish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brigandish | Hacker News Reader

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The facts are:

- people are being arrested, charged, and prosecuted, for opinions

- that number is greater than 1

- the number of people being arrested under speech laws, per year, is reportedly[0] over 12,000

- some substantial number of those are for opinions, some are not but we don't know how many either way [0] (and considering the government were attempting to delete the Courtdesk archive[1], I'd say that's by design)

- "convictions and sentencings for the relevant offences had decreased dramatically" [0]

This points to overzealous policing and vague laws.

The criticisms by Americans, who are surely aghast at this state of affairs given their founding principles, cannot be dismissed until better numbers are available, but while the number we do know is > 1, the criticisms are valid if not entirely sound (but may be entirely sound).

[0] https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off...

[1] https://www.legalcheek.com/2026/02/ministry-of-justice-order...

I agree there is a problem if even 1 person is treated like this.

I disagree that the American commentary on it is well informed, motivated by anything approaching principle, or really anything other than a desire to paint the UK in the worst possible light. Such figures being bandied around form part of a larger narrative along with false claims about "no-go" areas and hysteria about London having a Muslim mayor.

It's effectively rage-porn for the US right wing. We can see this in the continued framing as "12000 people arrested for inappropriate speech", when that number includes death threats as part of (for example) domestic violence cases.

Meanwhile, of course, let's ignore that the US President is weaponising the civil justice system in the US to silence critics and journalism he finds unfavourable.

> (but may be entirely sound)

We know they're not entirely sound, because the category of offences is wide enough that the number of these offences which are not, in fact, related to expressing one's opinion on social media is substantial. The arrests cover stalking and harassment, making death threats and threats of violence, racial abuse, intimidation, and inciting hatred via any form of communication down to and including snail mail.

So if there's one thing we do know, it's that the actual number arrested for "posts they make online" that should really be considered free speech is unlikely to be anywhere near that, and as such the statistic itself is useless. It's like looking at the overall death rate for the US (approximately 3 million) and proclaiming to be shocked at the results of gun ownership. But it will continue to be thrown around because it fits a specific narrative.

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