[delichon]

This kind of intimidation sucks and I'd like to see individual officers who indulge in it lose their qualified immunity and be prosecuted for it.

But I'm at least grateful to live under a regime that needs to break its own laws to do this, and so such charges can be dismissed by courts that follow the law, even if they don't apply consequences to the offending officials. Compare that to the UK where more than 12k people were arrested for social media posts in 2023 alone and where it is fully permitted under the law with great discretion and supported by the courts.

It's a bit like "my husband is better than yours because he doesn't beat me as hard", but it's something.

[dualvariable]

The 12k number is an estimate, and only 1k were convicted. And the law they're being charged with breaking covers things like threats to assault someone, false bomb threats, harassment of ex-partners, threats sent to MPs, serious domestic abuse-related crimes, etc. There's no breakdown of what each charge was for.

If you make a bomb threat or threaten to kill someone else over social media, you really should get arrested and prosecuted because that isn't an exercise of "first amendment rights".

[lux-lux-lux]

Given the costs of defending a federal case start at the five figs and the typical naughty tweets style offense nets community service at worst, I’m not so sure.

[rambojohnson]

in what world do you think they would actually be prosecuted?

[Steve16384]

Which of the 12K arrests do you not agree with? Or are you saying people should be free to write whatever they want on social media with no repercussions?

[vitally3643]

Saying what you want about the government without fear of reprecussion or intimidation or consequence from the government is literally in the constitution. Very specifically for this situation.

This isn't a "freespeach" argument, this is the actual text of the actual constitution. This is the actual literal reason that line is included in the bill of rights. It is explicit constitutional law that the government cannot punish you for criticizing the government.

There are a ton of exceptions to our right to free speech, but this is not one.

[pjc50]

Most of those aren't about the government, those are people using social media to threaten their ex and so on.

[bryceacc]

>Or are you saying people should be free to write whatever they want on social media with no repercussions?

no repercussions from the government, yes, people should be free to write whatever they want

[inglor_cz]

Most countries in the West have higher threshold to arrest someone over social media posts. Some actually much, much higher.

12K is just a ridiculous number and indicates that the UK indeed has a free speech problem. I don't think that in my country there were more like ~ 20 actual arrests over the same problem during the same period.

Even if you agree with prosecuting people for speech, why exactly would you arrest them and drag them to prison/jail? Even here in Europe, this is a sort of offense that usually results in a suspended sentence or a fine, and a physical arrest is absolutely unnecessary, unless there is a good suspicion that that person is going to harm some concrete people at a concrete time.

In a more liberal country, even if prosecution over an utterance takes place, it usually happens without arrests, simply by asking the culprit to come to a police station and explain themselves, later the same in front of a court. There just isn't any need for physical restraining of that person, it is just intimidation.