I'm not weighing in on the BBC reported case because all the relevant details are omitted. But in principle I support the notion those that do harm should be held to account; and without knowing the details, the 8 weeks of curfew don't sound necessarily implausible. Of course, laws can be excessive; that's for sure, but even if this one were (I don't have the details, and a sample size of 1 isn't something to draw conclusions from regardless) - that's merely an argument to be more reasonable, not to leave all harm entirely unpunished. Superficially: sure, it sounds unreasonable to give a teenager 8 weeks of curfew and a considerable 500 pound fine for something they said online. But I don't know the details; so I'm not sure what to make of that.
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> We didn't choose to draw the line though. The legislation was pushed through in the mid-2000s because of terrorists bombings (by Islamists) in the UK.
Yeah, that's society deciding to draw the line. Your use of the passive voice is notable, but I don't think think it's wise to think of this as a passive choice - a democratically elected parliament chose to write that act, and subsequent parliaments left it in place, by choice. It may well be a bad law - and many such laws are terrible; as are many other laws. But they're fundamentally the people's responsibility, and failing to own up to that responsibility is essentially giving up on democracy.
It would be lovely if we could live in the world in which all speech was good and none harmful. That would make all this super easy! But harms from communication do arise, and we need to deal with them.
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> > Regardless, though bad laws should be repealed the larger point stands: these countries have not devolved into Orwellian nightmares.
> They are locking people up for speech and investigating jokes. So yes they have.
The point of an Orwellian police state is to exercise (draconian) control. It is not enough for some isolated incident to occur.
In fact, I'll argue the opposite: that the world you would effectively help to create by rejecting such laws categorically is much closer to Orwellian than one in which we to work to avoid harmful statements. Because one central theme of the book is doublespeak, and in general the creation of alternative truths, and the hiding of real truths via misinformation. And that's exactly the world we're descending into. We should aim to prevent that, not to work toward that goal all while honestly, yet ironically claiming to be protecting free speech. It won't end well.
When you argue that some laws restricting speech have harmful consequences, I'll vigorously agree. When you argue that a free and open debate is one of the essential components of a functioning democracy, I'll vigorously agree. You're totally right!
But I also want to re-emphasize that the choices are not binary, nor trivial, nor that we should be aiming for centralized control of speech. I don't want to live in a police state, any more than you! But just because some laws aiming to prevent harmful speech miss their mark does not mean laws aiming to protect it cannot also miss their mark. Ideally, we'd acknowledge that we have a problem, and look for solutions that mitigate the doublespeak and disinformation while being difficult to centrally control, and avoiding draconian punishments too. We should be looking for self-reinforcing positive feedback loops, not direct control - that prevents most of the risks of direct punishment of speech, while hopefully still achieving some of the aims. And the first step along that process is having a frank discussion about this problem in the first place, and that's what we're struggling with as a society now.