zlacker

>>puppyc+(OP)
The Open Rights Group - https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/ - is probably a reasonable place to start.

Curious about what is scaring you btw.

>>Freezi+Ad
Scaring me is getting to prison for expressing my opinion on a social platform.

>>p4trik+4E
For context, there's a right-wing narrative in the UK that "thousands of people have been arrested just for posting their opinion on social media".

The reality is that the UK's "Communications Act" [0] does allow prosecutions for electronic communications (email, forums, and social media). The number of arrests under this Act are in the thousands, but it covers a wide range of issues like grooming, stalking, and racially aggravated hate crimes.

Earlier this year there were a number of violent & destructive riots across the UK which happened in response to a stabbing of 3 kids in Southport [1]. The riots were whipped up by a number of far-right entities on social media - personalities such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Andrew Tate, and Katie Hopkins - as well as more nebulous entities such as Europe Invasion. A crucial aspect of the far-right narrative was a false claim that the perpetrator was a Muslim asylum seeker. Arrests were made for directly inciting violence [2] as well as for generating misinformation about the perpetrator [3].

The discussion around this is in the sensitive area of free speech vs hate speech. In the UK we are a little more nuanced about the absolute requirement for freedom of speech. While I do appreciate the argument that policing of speech can become dangerous depending on who does the policing, I think the case of the riots is a good example of where we may need to evolve our ideas about what it means to incite violence. This episode demonstrates social media's potency and the horrific potential of the deliberate spreading of misinformation.

[0] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_riots

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/09/two...

[3] https://metro.co.uk/2024/08/08/woman-first-shared-fake-south...

>>n4r9+rU
I just stumbled for an article on the Spectator (looking for something else), posted nearby, and I read:

> After the recent riots, people were given prison sentences for posting words and images on social media. In some cases, the illegal incitement to violence was obvious [... But] Lee Dunn, fifty-one, on the other hand, got eight weeks for sharing three images of Asian-looking men with captions such as “Coming to a town near you”

>>mdp202+r91
In my view The Spectator is being disingenuous (which makes sense as one of the most right-wing mainstream publications in the UK). They omit to describe the content of the images, which showed Asian men entering Britain by boat and wielding knives in Westminster. This fuels the narrative of Asian/muslim asylum seekers being a violent threat to British society. In the context of an ongoing frenzy being whipped up based on false claims about asylum seekers, I think this did verge into the realm of racist hate speech.

Note that Lee Dunn pled guilty to the charges.