[even_639765]

UK law is far stricter than you might suppose.

https://fee.org/articles/uk-man-arrested-for-malicious-commu...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-for-offensive-...

[hnlmorg]

Oh I’m well aware of how strict the uk is. However none of those articles you shared are about people getting jail time (most of those cases were likely dropped in fact) and they certainly weren’t recent.

I’m not making generalisations here. The OP made a very specific statement about people being jailed recently for posting online and I’m saying they’ve completely missed the truth behind those actual arrests.

Just as all the subsequent posts yourself and others have made are glossing over the very specific claims the OP made.

I’m not going to argue that I think the UK gets things right with its approach to online content. But the OPs specific claim of people being arrested is missing the bigger story about why they got arrested. And that’s what I’m specifically calling FUD on — not the UKs wider policy. The uk is a shit show for a great many reasons (as a UK citizen I’m not blind to this at all). But that doesn’t mean we should exaggerate the truth for the sake of gaining a little extra karma on HN.

The simple fact is the reason for the recent arrests and jail time is for similar reasons people have been arrested and jailed for online content in the US (yes, it’s happened there too). This isn’t a problem with free speech, it’s actual criminals causing actual physical damage and thus who have broken other laws besides just communicating about it online. Hence my comparison to the Capitol riots.

[roenxi]

If you're trying to be precise about specific meaning, you probably should also be specific about only using the word jailed. You use "arrested" a few times there, and people do seem to be being arrested for mean tweets.