[skippyboxedhero]

The person in question did not say the latter. You have, presumably deliberately, decontextualized it. She said roughly what you said followed by "for all I care", and she also deleted the post a few minutes after.

(What some people may not understand: UK police are running a dragnet online now, it is unclear when this started but was in full force after Covid, you can post and immediately delete, you can post with five followers...they will find it, and will attempt to prosecute. People on here go mad when police in the US pick up drug addicts, the UK has a China-style operation aimed at the public, they are making 200-300 arrests a week, it is complete insanity).

Now compare this to what else people are seeing. Some people in the UK (I cannot say which ones) are subject to rules: benefit fraud, tax evasion, public disturbances everywhere..."community policing" so these laws are not enforced. A well-known paedophile politician was recently convicted for attempted rape and sexual assault, they got a sentence shorter than the person you are referring to above...a convicted paedophile. Some parts of the UK have given prosecutors guidelines not to give a custodial sentence to paedophiles. During the riots, whilst people were being arrested for tweeting, there was a video online of a policeman asking attendees of a local mosque to put their weapons back in the mosque...no arrests made. For people in the UK, the problem is not the danger of things being said online, the danger is things going on in the physical world around them. I don't think a reasonable person can fail to connect these two things, there is a reason why the police go after the innocent online rather than criminals.

[crtasm]

>she also deleted the post a few minutes after.

This is incorrect.

"At the time she had about 9,000 followers on X. Her message was reposted 940 times and viewed 310,000 times, before she deleted it three and a half hours later. " - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3nn60wyr6o

>you can post and immediately delete, you can post with five followers...they will find it, and will attempt to prosecute

Examples of this happening please?

[pcrh]

My question was more specific. I copied the quote from the Economist, a reliable publication.

So, assuming the posting was as written, would it fall under the "clear and imminent" criteria apparently used in the US?

[alephnerd]

It would not if there wasn't proof that there was actual planning. That said, you would most likely be monitored by local and state law enforcement.

A similar case happened in Central Illinois a couple years ago, where threats were posted but arrests were not made until the threats moved to actual action.

[pcrh]

In this case, the threats did move to action....

[alephnerd]

The person making the threat needs to be linked to the one taking the action (either via direct or indirect participation).

[pcrh]

In this case, she was found guilty of "sending a communication threatening death or serious harm".

>Sweeney wrote: "It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosque. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6x105wgz5o

[alephnerd]

Not in the US's case. A direct link would be needed.

American jurisprudence on speech leans towards Free Speech Absolutism [0] due to jurisprudence from the 1970s-2000s, and the test for "clear and imminent danger" is extremely high.

Even though the US and the rest of the Anglophone speak English, America jurisprudence is extremely distinct from the rest of the Anglophone (and vice versa), and IMO it doesn't make sense to compare one with the other due to these significant differences.

For example, the UK dealt with the Troubles into the late 1990s, and the US never had a similar insurgency since the 1950s in Puerto Rico, so there is a hardening in NatSec laws in the UK compared to the US.

This is why the US often leverages allied states to help with this kind of monitoring to sidestep some of the legal implications domestically.

That said, I agree with your point to a certain extent, the issue is the US and other Anglophone countries have a different relation with speech and civil liberties. It doesn't make sense to compare the US with the UK or EU and vice versa.

[0] - https://legal-forum.uchicago.edu/print-archive/free-speech-o...

[crtasm]

Also noted in the article: it was posted in the days after the riot and in response to seeing people cleaing up and repairing the damage.