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Comment by inigyou | Hacker News Reader

Lucy Connolly was arrested for threatening to kill a thousand people, for example.

I think generally the argument is that these usually aren’t credible threats, they’re hyperbole, and the police are overstepping by arresting people for saying they’ll do something when they have no evidence that that person would actually do that. A free society doesn’t arrest someone for saying “I’m going to burn down so-and-so’s house.” It waits until you actually go to so-and-so’s house with a can of petrol, and then arrests you.

Sending death threats has never been legal.

The statical lie with the UK numbers is the vast majority of cases are about the use of messaging services in domestic violence cases.

It’s the same problem as amber alerts - the stories you here about are the dramatic stranger danger ones, but the vast majority of the statistics are “boring” custody disputes.

> A free society doesn’t arrest someone for saying “I’m going to burn down so-and-so’s house.”

I feel like it's a significantly freer society when others can't threaten to murder me without consequences.

It's always weird that these "freeze peach absolutism" never seem to notice that death, is the ultimate censorship

The poster up thread said people were being arrested for "mean tweets" and now you've moved it to "but those death threats weren't serious!" No, the original claim was dishonest bullshit.

They were credible threats though, as the people were doing EXACTLY what she called for

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