What you’ve done is selectively quoted a small subset of portions from that article to misrepresent the full trial.
Which is exactly why I had to write my comment defending the UK government earlier. Believe me, I really don’t want to defend the government.
The UK government get a lot wrong when it comes to legislation regarding technology. In fact they get nearly everything wrong and I’ve frequently had to have words my MPs about it (not that that’s done any good). But they categorically do not lock people up just for shitposting. At best that’s just an exaggeration. At worst it’s an out right misrepresentation of the facts.
Are you talking about this?
"The initial post received six likes. However, it was sent to your 1,500 Facebook friends and, because of your lack of privacy settings, will have been forwarded to friends of your friends."
"shared" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, and likely used in a misleading way. Given how facebook uses algorithmic timelines, and the wording (the judge was seemingly unwilling to use a stronger word like "seen" or "read"), my guess is that was the upper bound of people who could have seen his post, not how many people actually seen it. It certainly doesn't mean 1,500 people actually clicked the shared button next to his post (or otherwise make a conscious effort to disseminate the post), as "his comments on Facebook had been shared with thousands" implies.
> and directly resulted criminal damage.
Is there any evidence that people who has committed crimes even seen his post? Or are you simply claiming that because he made such tweets, such tweets called for riots, and riots happened, that those tweets "directly resulted criminal damage"?
>Not only that, that his comments were intended to cause criminal damage and result in physical attacks against immigrants.
This doesn't contradict my prior comment, which specifically admits his behavior is illegal under even US law. My complaint was with the characterization that his tweets counts as "organising".
And let’s not forget that the Capital Hill riots were just a small few who took things out of hand - like with this guy. So it doesn’t need to be thousands to be a criminal offence.
There’s more about the wider debate here (the BBC is a lot more impartial than Sky News too) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr548zdmz3jo
And the notes of the arrest here: https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/man-convicted-intending-stir...
The guy in question pled guilty too. So he clearly admits responsibility for the attack on the hotel. And that in itself should indicate that there’s more to this story than just “shitposting” on Facebook.
The problem here is folks like Elon Musk are focusing on the “freedom of speech” aspect (and if course he is, he’s got a vested self interest to) and given Elons media reach, this story gets skewed into a different debate.
The ironic thing is the biggest voices arguing that the UK is Orwellian don’t even realise that arrests have been happening in their own county for the same things and for much longer than in the UK.
For example in America, 2 years ago: https://teslatelegraph.com/2023/11/14/a-man-has-been-sentenc...
Or how about 10 years ago: https://www.mic.com/articles/54961/8-social-media-users-arre...
And that’s my biggest complaint about this discussion on HN: The UK is singled out when this is happening in every country. And the cases people refer to in the UK are being distorted to sound like it’s harmless memes when the actual comments are far from what any sane person would call “shitposting”.
1. source?
2. Given the issues I outlined above with the word "shared", can you clarify what exactly is meant by that? Are we talking about the act of him posting to a group chat, or that other people made an conscious effort to disseminate his post?
>And the notes of the arrest here: https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/man-convicted-intending-stir...
This doesn't provide any information to refute the points I presented in my prior comment.
>The guy in question pled guilty too. So he clearly admits responsibility for the attack on the hotel.
Don't confuse pleading with guilt. He faced years/decades in prison, along with any fines/legal bills. Pleading out could be a rational choice even if he was innocent.
>And that in itself should indicate that there’s more to this story than just “shitposting” on Facebook.
This is circular reasoning. If the thing being discussed was whether prosecutors were overzealous in prosecuting such tweets, you can't use the fact that he was prosecuted in arguing that arguing prosecutors weren't overzealous.
>The ironic thing is the biggest voices arguing that the UK is Orwellian don’t even realise that arrests have been happening in their own county for the same things and for much longer than in the UK.
>For example in America, 2 years ago: https://teslatelegraph.com/2023/11/14/a-man-has-been-sentenc...
>Or how about 10 years ago: https://www.mic.com/articles/54961/8-social-media-users-arre...
I'm not sure why you're still trying to argue such acts are criminal, when a few comments ago I specifically agreed with the possibility that such acts are criminal.
>[...] I agree such tweet might be illegal under US law (it plausibly meets the "imminent lawless action" standard) [...]
>What actually happened was people were arrested for instigating riots. This is no different to what happened in the US regarding the Capital Hill riots — people who helped organise it online were arrested too.
According to: https://news.sky.com/story/jordan-parlour-facebook-user-jail...
One of the "instigators" was sent to prison for tweeting "every man and his dog should smash [the] f** out of Britannia hotel (in Leeds)". While I agree such tweet might be illegal under US law (it plausibly meets the "imminent lawless action" standard), it's a stretch to equate that to "organise [the Capital Hill riots] online" (whatever that means). A tweet by a nobody who got 6 likes isn't "organising". It's shitposting.