[Kelteseth]

I didn't find any context for your claim so here is some reddit comment:

So it’s true 3,300 people were arrested for posts online. What they don’t tell you are the statistics or context. The actual law for these arrests covers EVERYTHING online. These arrests include those arrested for terrorism (if the planning/act of terror includes any online communication in the UK), threats of violence, racist abuse, hate speech and unwanted communication (including sending unsolicited sexual photos to strangers). It also includes spreading false information that could cause harm or affect an ingoing investigation.

If you look at convictions, only 137 people were actually sentenced in 2024.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebunkThis/comments/1mmux6r/comment...

[aydyn]

The arrest is the punishment. Here is a man getting arrested and subsequently harassed by the Police for 13 weeks for just posting a picture of himself with a shotgun in America.

https://archive.is/bH56T

[hypeatei]

Or the Tennessee man held in jail for over a month for a Facebook meme post: https://www.wtae.com/article/tennessee-facebook-post-felony-...

Note: this occurred in the US and not the UK but it happens here, too.

[dommer]

We’re basically seeing this story through media summaries and Richelieu-Booth’s own account, which means the narrative reflects either what he says happened or brief police statements. There’s very little publicly available that allows anyone to independently confirm or contradict either side.

Stories like this are designed to provoke a reaction, but the truth could be far more mundane: he might be a completely unreasonable person who was genuinely stalking someone, and police might have had credible concerns. We simply don’t have the full picture.

For balance, West Yorkshire Police do have a reputation for being heavy handed. the same force that used drones during Covid to shame people walking alone on the moors.

My point is: this isn’t solid evidence of Orwellian decline. It’s difficult to draw sweeping conclusions about Britain from a single case built on incomplete information and media amplification.

[jeroenhd]

This has a bit more info: https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/orwellian-nightmare...

Notably:

> with the situation causing him considerable stress at a point where he was also dealing with an inquest into the deaths of his parents, who had both died in a car crash in 2023

so for some reason, there was something going on about his parents' death two years later. The article also states:

> He said the complaint against him was linked to an ongoing business dispute.

My take is that someone used his pictures of him holding guns (illegal in the UK) as support for a claim that he is an armed and dangerous stalker. Whatever got flagged regarding the inquest into his parents' deaths probably added suspicion. Police acted quickly (as they should, but probably too quickly) and made mistakes, but it looks like they couldn't accept that they were being used, so they decided to continue pressing onwards with the investigation, hoping they were still right and wouldn't be on the hook for a false arrest.

Getting falsely arrested is always terrible, but the way the media spins this as some kind of witch hunt about a LinkedIn post is misleading at best.

[Aurornis]

> These arrests include those arrested for terrorism (if the planning/act of terror includes any online communication in the UK), threats of violence, racist abuse, hate speech and unwanted communication

All of these attempts to "debunk" this statistic feel like they're missing the mark. How did the UK get a point where planning terrorism and making mean comments online go into the same statistic for arrests? Does it not seem strange that the second half of that list is worthy of arrest?

> If you look at convictions, only 137 people were actually sentenced in 2024.

This, again, does not help. Being arrested isn't a casual thing. It threatens everything from your job to your reputation and your relationships, even if you aren't convicted.

[belorn]

In many countries you do not get charged with every possible crime if there is a larger crime involve. If someone rob a place, they don't also need to have separate charges for illegally entering the place, destroying property when they broke the window, selling stolen goods, wire fraud for using the banking system, and money laundering for concealing that it is illegal money, and tax evasion. Each step is illegal on their own, but time crime statistics won't be written like that. The prosecutor may argue that if the accused are not found guilty for the primary, then secondaries may then be used.

The strange thing is that the UK are arresting people for abusing the telecom system, and not for the more serious crime like terrorism, death threats, harassment and sexual harassment.

[jeroenhd]

> How did the UK get a point where planning terrorism and making mean comments online go into the same statistic for arrests?

In most publications: because the people reporting on these statistics can get more views and clicks that way. FUD sells. If someone online can defuse the statistics, the reporters that spread them also could've, but chose not to.

As for the second half of the list, "racist abuse, hate speech, and unwanted communication" are pretty common things to incriminate. Even the extremely liberal freedom of speech laws in the USA do not permit stalking ("unwanted communication") and racist abuse is criminalized in all kinds of cases (i.e. firing someone because of their race).

[mc32]

Can you just imagine the amount of arrests we’d have in the US if simply saying really offensive things at officials was enough to get you arrested.

Using Carlin’s dirty words against others you dislike or quoting passages from historical books should not warrant arrests.

[lez]

Thank you. I heard the number locally at a privacy conference. No hard data, but I saw them being terrified for 1984 becoming a reality. Even if there's no sentence, the real result is self-censorship, which is NOT shown up in ANY statistics.

[more_corn]

It also includes traveling to the United States where gun ownership is legal, and posting a picture of yourself holding a gun.

[jeroenhd]

... following a police complaint about stalking, against a man involved in a business dispute, seemingly among other things. He may be innocent, but there's more to the story than the picture of the gun.

[Aurornis]

This comment is getting downvoted, but another comment provide a real source for this having happened to someone: https://archive.is/bH56T

[rustystump]

Ahh yes reddit the most accurate location of truth finding. Could you at least link the source of the comment or are we supposed to take a random redditor as fact?

[ryanmcbride]

oh well as long as it's only happening to some people no problem then huh? That's okay?