1) The point I was making is that there shouldn't be any prosecutions of this kind, so what act they are prosecuted under is irrelevant.

2) You then pretending I am arguing a moral narrative when it isn't. I am arguing on principle. That are not the same thing.

BTW I didn't form this opinion from news articles online. I came to this opinion by reading books around the subject, where half of each page is often citations.

> No, I'm just pointing out some very basic logical gaps in some of the stuff you were saying.

No you didn't. You asserted it was so and then told me I imagined half of it. That is literally gas-lighting.

> Which would suggest that you are, at worst, perhaps a bit underinformed about certain things.

You haven't shown that at all. What you did was ignore the point I was trying to make and get into minutia about what act who was being prosecuted under.

This is disingenuous.

> Or otherwise not taking as critical an eye to the various media sources you ingest as you perhaps could be.

I do. You are making the assertion (without evidence) I don't and I don't appreciate it. When the Epstein court documents were released, I read a fair deal of it (it is well over 1000 pages). When Activision was taken to court for sexual discrimination I read the actual complaint submitted to the Californian court. You know why I read the original court documents? I realised I had been lied to before by some media sources (some of those people believe to be credible as well).

So I actually do go to the original source video, document wherever possible.

So your assertions made without evidence are disingenuous.

> That's all that need be said. I recommend we give this topic a rest, and move onto other threads.

Not at all. You tried to gaslight me. You didn't actually engage with anything I said. That is disingenuous.

No it isn't. If you can't explain what the issue is with my logic then what you are saying is utterly unconvincing. I was largely correct about everything I have claimed. I will grant you I may get minutia wrong, but that doesn't take away from the general point that I am making.

> Point being: if this is how the truth gets mangled and distorted inside your own head; or you simply choose not to vet and fact-check your sources, at least once in a while -- then that's a situation which you've created for yourself. Not the doing of some totalitarian government, or any other kind of external bully.

No what you are doing is known as gas-lighting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

What you are essentially trying to convince me that I am crazy. I am quite familiar with this form argumentation and I don't appreciate it.

I will redirect you back to the point that was being discussed, because you made several accusations towards me that just aren't true and I am not going bother to address them after you tried gas-lighting me. All I am going to tell you is that I actively avoid news sites these days as I agree they omit information to suit a narrative.

The point being discussed was whether people an alarming number of people were being imprisoned for speech in the UK. Some people have compared Russia and the UK. Russia is ran essentially by a dictator, the UK is a constitution Monarchy and is considered to be modern democracy. The UK is supposed to be better in regards to Russia in a vast number of things, one of those being human rights.

There are three simple facts:

* People in the UK can be and have been punished for speech.

* People in Russia can be and have been punished for speech.

* There is evidence that there are less people per capita being arrested and prosecuted in the Russia for speech than the UK. This has been reported on by a number of news sources which looks like it has come from official numbers.

It does not matter to me what rationale is used for justify that punishment is, I don't believe people should be punished for speech outside of very specific criteria e.g. direct calls for violence (that quote your provided from Richard Medhurst wouldn't fall under that btw) or defamation.

What exact bullshit legislation people have been charged under is something I don't care about. I don't make the distinction. I believe it is to create a chilling effect, and allow the two major parties to prosecute their political rivals.

e.g. There was even talk of prosecuting Nigel Farage (one of the eternal boogiemen) shortly after this year election as the media were trying to pretend he was somehow the cause of the riots earlier this year. I don't like him, but he didn't cause the riots.

> And then by conflating the UK's legislation (which, whatever you make of it, is essential non-political, and covers forms of communication that most people would agree are basically "harmful" even though they would be opposed to a ban on them) with the restrictions in Russia, which are of course highly political (as indicated by the article you linked to), and not related to protecting anyone from harm in any meaningful sense.

They specifically say that certain forms of speech are prohibited, that includes political speech that you and I might find detestable. That speech you may find offence but it is still political speech. Some of it includes opposition against Israel's military campaigns in Palestine.

What most people agree is "harmful" isn't objective measure.

> That is: the UK's idea of harmful speech is that which promotes "terror, hate, fraud, child sexual abuse and assisting or encouraging suicide"

Terror and hate are nebulous terms that are entirely subjective. Pretending that they are somehow objective is what everyone does when they side with the UK government on this issue and they use the same nebulous terminology as the UK government such as "harmful". Speech cannot be harmful in itself. The vast majority of adults outside of mentally disabled have their own agency. People choose how to react to speech.

Also notice you also groped speech related offences with things that should be banned like CSAM material and things that are already illegal (fraud).

> Anastasia Bubeyeva shows a screenshot on her computer of a picture of a toothpaste tube with the words: “Squeeze Russia out of yourself!” For sharing this picture on a social media site with his 12 friends, her husband was sentenced this month to more than two years in prison.

That isn't actually fundamentally different to what happens in the UK. So no I don't see the difference. It so funny that you think it is a gotcha and it really isn't.

Every-time this conversation comes up we have people downplaying what is happening. It is so tiresome.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7qenxy8r2

I have to check older news articles but I suspect these are the ones that were presented as moderate rebels by the media when it was convienient.

I am sure threats of violence are already illegal. If those people are in the UK, they should be prosecuted. If they are not in the UK they is not threat. I don't believe any if these online threats BTW are credible.

What these MPs do is frequently make outlandish statements, which then gets them a bunch of hate (Jess Phillips has done this her entire political career) and useful idiots will shout their mouth off online. These MPs then point to all the "hate" they are getting. There is even a meme demonstrating this very effect:

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/960/143/d7a...

> with two MPs murdered in the last decade.

The murder of David Amess had nothing to do with Social Media. The killer said it was to do with religion when asked by Police.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_David_Amess#Investig...

I believe the individual was deemed at risk of radicalisation.

> You and I have the luxury that we can just not be on Twitter - but when you're an MP, unless you're in a very safe seat you've got to meet voters where they are, not where you'd like them to be.

They don't need to be on Twitter. Twitter isn't their local constituents. They have surgeries for this very reason. Very few people on Twitter are relevant to what happens on election day in their constituency.

> So from an MP's perspective? In one hand they've got a report about revenge porn, cyber-bullying, 4chan /pol/ and pro-anorexia facebook groups. In the other hand they've got their phone where someone's just told them to kill themselves.

Even if that is true that doesn't mean we restrict everyone's rights because a minority are engaging in illegal/immoral acts.

> They believe in these "illegal harms" because they've got a front row seat, and experience them on a daily basis.

That is what they say to sell the narrative that they need to censor social media. If you look over the last 20 years. It is as if nobody has learned anything from the early 2000s and the war on terror. They will exploit (or create) any crisis.

This convo thread the same route of someone disputing the fact the journalists were having their homes raided, I couldn’t remember the name of the journalist or the exact time, so when someone does find it, we then have a discussion on the exact language and numbers. Ignoring the fact that what I said was largely correct.

The number seems reasonable considering the data we have. TBH, It doesn’t matter if it is 1000 or 3000. It is too much either way IMO.

This isn’t a right or left "team sports" issue either. I deliberately avoid talking in those terms yet people seem to assign a team to you.

Non-speech related offences I don’t care about in relation to this topic. I believe the 3000 a year number was banded about for speech offences. I do think it is likely that this number is roughly correct as it matches up with what I previously heard.

I btw believe one person being prosecuted for speech related offences is too many. IMO it shouldn’t happen at all.

Moreover I am quite tired of people telling me it isn’t happening after I can distinctly remember a large number of cases over the years where this does happen.

I am of the opinion that the vast majority of journalists are simply stenographers. I wouldn't expect them to do their job. Unfortunately you have do piece together the truth for yourself.

No I am not.

> If .gov == bad guy then you’re screwed whether or not you leave a digital trail on social media because you’re already leaving one anyway (unless you’re a marginal outlier that isn’t worth considering for this “problem”). If that’s your threat model then you’re either super-important or I worry you’ve been sold a scary story by social media algorithms.

You are pretending as if one would need perfect op-sec (which is impossible). If you have a throwaway email, a sim paid for via cash and a VPN/Tor will make you much more difficult to track down and most of this can be learned via watching a few YouTube videos. You don't even have to do the more crazy stuff like running Tails.

Having an ID requirement will make it much more difficult as I suspect other regions will soon follow suite in implementing something similar.

There are also benefits to pseudo-anonymity. I want to keep my online life and my real life separate. This will mean that they can never be separate.

> On the other hand, the idea that this is an impossible tech problem to solve is also disingenuous. My point is that it could be solved. And quickly and easily too. If the incentive model were there. And whilst I’ve not given the solution a huge amount of thought (I’m not actually that interested in solving it) I’m certain that an authenticated assertion could be made that wasn’t directly attributable to an individual - i.e., a mechanism could be developed that would solve for both problems.

I never said that the tech problem was impossible to resolve. Again that is your assertion. I simply stated what I believe is most likely to happen in the near to medium term.

https://www.gov.uk/contract-types-and-employer-responsibilit...

That isn't true. It has made contracting a lot more difficult. I am in a number of freelancer groups and it has affected them. I have heard the same from recruiters, from freelancers, from people that run job boards.

> Every contractor I have ever met seems to know about umbrella companies

Most contractors run their own private LTD (like I did). They don't use umbrella companies because you are put on PAYE and you end up paying through the nose in tax.

Typically you get a third party to check a contract for you to see whether it falls under IR-35. I could do it myself, but I would rather pay someone to check it for me.

Many contracts will require you to have IR-35 "insurance" which feels like a scam, but it is required a lot of the time by the contract. This is in addition to PL and PI insurances.