Comment by mjburgess | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjburgess | Hacker News Reader

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There are a couple of cases like this, including one about some racist remarks in liverpool -- both were overturned on appeal.

> Chambers appealed against the Crown Court decision to the High Court, which would ultimately quash the conviction.

These are absolutely trivial cases to assume that somehow the UK has suspended the free expression rights of its citizens. These amount to over-reach by the lowest courts (staffed by volunteer judges, fyi) which were corrected. That's about as good as justice is in practice.

(It's also an unaddressed issue on exactly what social media is -- people tend to assume its some private conversation, but its at least as plausible to treat it as a acts of publishing to a public environment. When those actions constitue attacks on people, the UK/Europe have typically regarded public attacks as having fewer free expression protections).

Neverthless, these cases are used by the far right online to disguise what has been action taken by the UK gov against far right quasi-terrorist groups engaged in mass violence. The UK gov is not persecuting people for free expression, they have taken action against people using social media to organise murder.

One should be careful to note where this perception of UK speech laws is coming from. It's not free speech classical liberals.

Is your argument really that as long as the conviction is eventually overturned, no harm no foul it's just a "trivial case" so everyone should just pretend it never happened? Really?

It's trivial with respect to the question of whether political free expression in the UK is somehow under threat, yes. A handful of weird cases of extremely mild police overreach, corrected by a court -- hardly add up to anything. Every legal system in the world has such cases, in almost every other, they are much more extreme. In the UK, no one is paying for legal cases they win, unlike in the US where "free speech" is obtainable only if you can pay for your defence.

I mean in the UK we aren't used to using the court system to obtain our rights, but this is basically the american system. It's extraordinary to hear americans express concern that a handful of people in the UK had to use the standard court procedure to have their rights enforced, which they did.

Would the UK be better if these cases did not happen? Sure. But there's no legal system, almost by definition, that isnt going to have these cases. That's what courts exist to do -- to prevent executive overreach.

The question is why are a handful of people, whose rights were enforced by the courts, being used as political agitprop against the UK? The answer is pretty obvious. It's a deliberate project of the far right to create popular resentement towards democractic governments in the west, at the time these governemnts are arresting rioters for attempting to murder immigrants.

This isnt hard to see. These stories are spread by a very narrow range of extremely famous propagandists with a very obvious agenda.

None of them mention that these cases were all thrown out on appeal. Nor that there's a tiny number of them. Nor that all the ones that result in conviction are basically domestic terrorism

Can you see how even the fact that police will knock on your door for a social media post will by definition have a chilling effect on free expression? Will low wage hourly workers in the UK feel secure in voicing their dissatisfaction with their child's school knowing that, while they might be convicted of a crime for doing so, it will probably get overturned on appeal even though they'll lose their job in the interim; or, will they just shut up and go along with whatever they're unhappy about?

Any more than a defamation law suit?

Do you think it would be better to have people sue those who insult them on social media, in order to bankrupt them -- as in so-called Free Speech america? Where on earth do you imagine free speech is so protected that your worry is a (2 or 3) in 70 million-short that you'd have to talk to a police officier?

The idea that we have police investigating social media posts (and the like) is largely just made up. Its a handful of cases.

Do you understand that you cannot have 100% perfect decision making (of police, or anyone else) in a society -- and that the people who want you to demand this 100% are the ones organsising murders on these platforms? The ones kidnapping people and enslaving them in foreign prisons?

You're just playing a useful idiot. The idea that people in the UK are, at large, even aware of these cases is nonesense, let alone are worried about a police visit for a social media post. Just open twitter: are any of the millions of UK profiles in any sense "reserved" or chilled by these police visits?

The people who are spouting this nonesense are worried because they use these platforms to incite race riots whose aim is to kill people. Have a little perspective.

Apart from the fact that you have private prosecution in the UK, there's definitely a difference between private action for compensation and state action that might come with a criminal record.

The UK is the home of Cautions and ASBO's where you find out you have a criminal record just like that.

A place where you'd rather call the police than intervene to stop an ongoing crime because you might end up with a criminal record.

Canada of course is similar here.

It's all a little unconvincing when the US is enslaving people in foreign prisons at the whim of a president.

The question isn't whether UK society is the freest imaginable -- but at the moment, it is very plausibly, the freest on the earth.

No country is free if you can't defend yourself and others without worry of legal repercussions.

That's not true of the UK. Especially Scotland.

Freest in the world my big arse.

There's places in the world where slaves are openly traded today. I'll give you a clue. They tend to support Hamas.

[flagged]

It's also ignoring that the entire process of being charged with a crime is punishment itself - even if never convicted, even if overturned on appeal.

If you've never been involved in court proceedings it will come as a surprise.

Yep. I didn't want to get into all of that because it would have made the post even longer tbh.

OK, so reflecting on the world at the moment. Do you want the police to suspend investigating all complaints involving social media, or to continue to investigate them?

If you choose the first one, then you're preventing the investigation of mass riots, conspiracy to murder, mass disruption of public infrastructure -- and so on. All which have happened in the last 9mo, and gone through the courts. BUT you do have the advantage that police wont, once in a blue moon, turn up to someone's house and investigae them for a bit of nonesense that disappears within a day or at most a month when a real judge has looked at the case.

If you choose two, then you can still offer guidance to local police forces to be more careful in assessing complaints -- guidance which has almost certainly been given, since the gov arent happy theyre being distracted with this BS.

Now ask yourself: who at the moment really wants option number 1?

> OK, so reflecting on the world at the moment. Do you want the police to suspend investigating all complaints involving social media, or to continue to investigate them?

Yes. I do. I want them to put resources into catch the criminals in my area that have been stealing motor vehicles instead as that actually affect me and my community. Not policing social media.

The criminals in your area are probably plotting those thefts on whatsapp.

I dont know what century you think this is, if you're sincere about catching criminals you would want even more intrusion into online spaces.

They could you know arrest the person and search the phone under suspicion, or get a court order. They don't need mass surveillance. Maybe they should do their job and actually investigate it, which they don't do.

You can always justify more infringements on personal liberties under the guise of stopping crime, protecting the children, stopping the terrorists. That doesn't mean we should.

What we shouldn't be doing is using resources to find people saying naughty words on facebook (which is literally what they do).

This was literally posted here like last week, I suggest you read it:

https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/04/11/encryption...

>if you're sincere about catching criminals you would want even more intrusion into online spaces

Why?

For 40 years, Police in the US have been given basically carte-blanche to do whatever dragnet surveillance they want, as long as it "technically" is done by a third party they just buy services from. Police have had constant and perfect visibility into the digital world, with almost no moderating force, and yet they're so bad at finding culprits that violent crime clearance rates are still a coinflip.

Oh actually that's just in my State. ME claims the national violent crime clearance rate is ~20%. Jesus.

It seems obvious to me that police departments are either utterly incapable of, or utterly unwilling of, doing their damn job. We have given them near infinite power and zero responsibility and they've spent those immense resources being trained that everyone is trying to kill them, being taught how to shoot people first and ask questions later, and harassing people, often including journalists literally exposing their mob activity.

Please don't give them more power until they demonstrate an ability to productively use the power we have already given them.

Why is everyone assuming the police should be policing pre-crime?

No one's talking about pre-crime. I'm talking about crime.

It's a crime to conspire to murder; to commit fraud; to arrange an act of terrorism; and so on. And in all relevant cases, social media was used in court after-the-fact just as evidence.

So we're talking about activity on social media which are crimes themselves, just being used as evidence after other crimes have been committed.

This is the problem with the propaganda being put out there at the moment, none of it is true -- and all of it is in the service of disgusing the content of actual court cases.

People on the far-right like to use the phrase "posting to social media" when they mean "using online communication platforms to arrange a violent riot with the intent to murder people". And they like to pretend this evidence collection is happening before those actions -- when its after, and presented in court.

Is the "far right" in the room now with you now? When have you dealt with any of the "far right". How do you know they really exist? Most of the people I've encountered on the far right have been losers that literally live with their mother or edgy teenagers trolling people online.

It is you my friend that has been propagandised. They always point at a scary person and then say that they need to take away your rights and your privacy.

> It's a crime to conspire to murder; to commit fraud; to arrange an act of terrorism; and so on. And in all relevant cases, social media was used in court after-the-fact just as evidence.

Why should I lose privacy and my ability to speak freely because someone else committed an unrelated crime?

Why does this require mass surveillance, when they can get a warrant to search their electronic devices?

The answer is I shouldn't.

> So we're talking about activity on social media which are crimes themselves, just being used as evidence after other crimes have been committed.

Some of this activity that are crimes is making edgy comments on twitter while drunk and then deleting it the next day. That is illegal under the communications act of 2003.

The far right have just recently put ~130 unknowns into black vans, on to plans, to be sold into slavery in an elsavadorian prison. Of the two we have information on, both are legal residents of their own country. Of the rest, all we know is that they are innocent before the law, since theyve had no trial.

The oligarch who presently threatens the legislature of the largest democracy in the world with being having their opponents funded at the primary stage -- is also the same person who has had 100,000s of legal employees of the government fired and who has prompted these stories about the UK on the world's most imporatnt political media platform, that he owns. He did so after riots took place in the UK whose aim was to murder immigrants who had been falsely accused of crimes, these accusations also spread by the very same oligarch.

There's a line from the person trying to burn down a hotel with immigrants inside, in the UK, to social media, to the enslavement of unknown persons in the US. That line we call "the far right" and it's a pretty small group, at the top.

I cannot really grasp how a person would be confused by who the far right are and at the same time have at their fingertips news stories about girls in liverpool. One has to imagine you aren't really being serious.

This is exhausting. Now you are bringing up US politics. We are talking about the UK and the UK law.

I have linked you the communications act of 2003, I have linked you examples of cases where people have be prosecuted for speech and you are going on about the current Administration in the United States which is on the other-side of an ocean.

I am asking you when have you met someone in real life that is "far right"? You are unlikely to have done so because there is maybe a few thousand at most in a country of 80 million people.

I have seen the leaked membership details of the BNP. Do you know how many people were in the BNP? IIRC it was less than 500 people for the entire UK.

You are talking as if there are Brown Shirts marching up every UK high street.

The boogeymans are going to get control of the government! To stop them we better give the government all the tools needed to monitor everything at all times!

Boogeymans win an election. And gain all the tools needed.

Surprised picachu face as the kids say, I believe.

Yep. It is honestly tiresome. It is the same bad arguments are repeated ad-nauseam. The UK government and various public entities have been repeatedly shown to abuse the powers given to them.

It doesn't matter if you show all the times it was abused, or someone life has been ruined for because they drunkely said something stupid on facebook, it is just ignored or if it later gets overturned that it is no big deal even though they had to spent months or years dealing with the legal system.

I have spoken to a lot of young people (typically men) in their 20s that just want to leave the country because they can see where this is all going.

Anyway my top comment has been made dead. I hate this site.

> Are you really going to defend the conviction of a teenage girl quoting Snoop Dogg lyrics on facebook?

Can you link me to the evidence you have for this person having been convicted? Because she wasnt, the case was immediately over turned on appeal and the lower court volunteer judge basically reprimanded.

Do you have any evidence for any of these things you believe? Have you looked into any of them? Who told you about them? How do you know about a teenager in liverpool that upset a police officer? Why is that something you know about? Do you not find that odd? Isn't it strange that you "know" she was "convicted" but have no actual idea what happened?

Just reflect a moment on what the major actions of the UK gov. involving social media have been over the last year, and which of those have resulted in actual convinctions. HINT: ones involving plots to murder people by the far right.

Hmm... who exactly has been talking about all these "free speech" cases? Coincidence?

> Can you link me to the evidence you have for this person having been convicted? Because she wasnt, the case was immediately over turned on appeal and the lower court volunteer judge basically reprimanded.

I am aware of this and I deliberately used this as bait, quite predictably you defended what took place.

You must have missed the bit where the police literally go looking for offensive words on social media. They literally have software that flags up speech.

It matters not that later on it was "corrected". The reason it was "corrected" I suspect was because of the amount of pressure put on politicians after it was featured in the media.

* There should not be entire police departments dedicated to prosecuting things said on social media.

* There should not be software that flags up the fact that you said naughty words.

* This should not have never even got to court in the first place.

> Just reflect a moment on what the major actions of the UK gov. involving social media have been over the last year, and which of those have resulted in actual convinctions. HINT: ones involving plots to murder people by the far right.

Argh yes the terrifying "far right".

The fact is that the government point at scary people like the Islamic Extremists (I am old enough to remember that), the neo-nazis, homo-phobes and other generally nasty people to sell these awful laws and then they are (mis)used against normal people.

> Hmm... who exactly has been talking about all these "free speech" cases? Coincidence?

Why does it matter? If Adolf Hitler/Francisco Franco/Mussolini/Stalin/<insert despot> rose from the dead tomorrow and was making valid criticisms of the various laws in the UK that stifle speech that doesn't mean that they are incorrect about those facts. It would make them hypocrites, but not incorrect.

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