[dirasieb]

12 thousand people arrested per year for social media posts is "balanced"? https://archive.ph/bdEqK

at this point it's the #1 principle of the UK government, everything else comes second after putting people in jail for saying the wrong things

[jeroenhd]

What the law says and what law enforcement does are two different things. 90% of those arrests don't lead to conviction. The law isn't the problem here.

[dirasieb]

do you think being arrested for social media posts can lead to a chilling effect on those social media posts? why are we pretending that being "arrested but not convicted" is anywhere near acceptable for speech the government doesn't like?

[jeroenhd]

Cops can arrest anyone for any reason. If it wasn't for speech, it'd be for public intoxication or accusations of being a paedophiles or for potentially possessing a weapon.

Like the linked article states: the law doesn't permit the police to do what they do. Even if you implement an America-style "you can even yell bomb in an airport" speech law, the cops would still arrest people to intimidate them. Changing the law does nothing when the police force is simply ignoring the law.

[dirasieb]

>America-style "you can even yell bomb in an airport"

that's not even remotely close to reality, you have zero understanding of what the free speech laws in america are if you believe this is covered by the first amendment

[tbrownaw]

I think "balanced" here is about how it works rather than about the end result.