The policeman is wrong about the law, what about if you are Just Stop Oil and have this chap's views , do you get a warning and a cup of tea? This is thought police nonsense, either a crime has been committed or it hasn't. Offending someone is not a crime, yet

Edited by HKOwen (20 Oct 2022 11.39am)

Responsibility Deficit Disorder is a medical condition. Symptoms include inability to be corrected when wrong, false sense of superiority, desire to share personal info no else cares about, general hubris. It's a medical issue rather than pure arrogance.

you want to say some homophobic language in the company of a policeman ? tell him you are quoting an ancient Holy text.

if he arrests you, he could find himself in a World of sh1.t

Eze Peasy at Anfield....

I think the "victim" made a valid point. This is not free speech issue when you are accusing someone of faking being disabled. If they are what they say they are then it is libel, this idiot like the one in the US (Sandy Hook) is making a living off other people's misery so they are entitled to sue and I hope they do.

One more point

Offending someone is only a crime when the Police consider it to be.
The law now considers what is said against 'protected characteristics'...it's completely nuts and the changes have been kept by our fake conservatives.

England stopped being England during Blair's time. He destroyed hundreds of years of our traditions in several ways and that was one of them.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Yep, that's exactly my point Stirling.

We have seen a rise in ideologues supposedly on the 'left', whom utilise the likes of social media (see next para.) and if granted such powers it is not common sense but power prevailing and to favour those it rests with. Before we had seen it with 'media' (printing press and so on) but now it lies with the many who, as a collective, are downright stupid if not malignant.

That's my reasoning behind the argument that much of the nonsense we see today is promulgated by the weak and failures as they can safely and anonymously (both to a degree) utilise platforms to spread their own ideologies which are based on nothing more than a desire to change the world, in which they have failed, to something else in which they might stand a chance. This is of course to the detriment of the many.

It was first and foremost but even now most predominantly utilised by the 'far left' but those on the other end of the spectrum will not be far behind in following the same methodology. Look at the fear generated over Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, the left are sincerely fearing a level playing field or sharing that which they have weaponised.

Edited by Nicholas91 (31 Oct 2022 3.50pm)

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!

It is worth noting here that the idea of total free speech across social media platforms is a fantasy, as long as those platforms a) require advertising to make money and b) require massive user bases to remain viable.

Some great quotes from a recent Verge article on the matter

Here are some examples: you can write as many polite letters to advertisers as you want, but you cannot reasonably expect to collect any meaningful advertising revenue if you do not promise those advertisers “brand safety.” That means you have to ban racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total assholes. So you can make all the promises about “free speech” you want, but the dull reality is that you still have to ban a bunch of legal speech if you want to make money.

'it turns out that most people do not want to participate in horrible unmoderated internet spaces full of s***ty racists and not-all-men fedora bullies. (This is why Twitter is so small compared to its peers!) What most people want from social media is to have nice experiences and to feel validated all the time. They want to live at Disney World. So if you want more people to join Twitter and actually post tweets, you have to make the experience much, much more pleasant. Which means: moderating more aggressively! Again, every “alternative” social network has learned this lesson the hard way. Like, over and over and over again.'

Parler - banning users

Truth social – heavy moderation (eg. posts containing 'abortion is healthcare' being shadow-banned)

More on Parler, an amusing exerpt from techdirt

'You may recall that last summer, we mocked how Parler was speed running the content moderation learning curve. It seems that every year a new social media service pops up, insisting that it believes in “free speech” and won’t “censor” anything. And then… reality hits. And it realizes that if you do no moderation at all, your website is a total and complete garbage dump full of spam, p***. harassment, abuse and trolling. And just as Parler learned it needed to do some moderation (and its then CEO even bragged about kicking off “leftist trolls”), every new platform learns the same damn thing eventually. Though, amusingly, it seems to happen faster and faster each time.'

So context is required when complaining about the lack of free speech on social media platforms. Moderation of content in order to provide a more usable product for audiences is just an inevitable reality. No point moaning about something that is impossible to create, in my view.

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.