>Back in my day it was just a given people said mean things on the internet.
Isn't this indicative of a serious problem though? If there were places IRL where the average person is subjected to a constant barrage of callousness it wouldn't continue to exist, would it?
Can we have free speech without accountability? In the past accountability seemed like a major factor.
> If there were places IRL where the average person is subjected to a constant barrage of callousness it wouldn't continue to exist, would it?
Is this not why the real issue is related to social media itself, rather than generalised "trolling"? This isn't as much of an issue in niche forums or niche-dedicated social sites.
We are free to make our accounts private, block/sign out/delete/not partake in social media, yet many feel like they are __unable__ to make use of these features.
IRL, you can't always easily escape bullying. Online, you can choose not to engage; yet people continue to place themselves in the line of fire. I think this speaks to a much deeper issue (as you point out) and I'm not sure jailing trolls is the answer.
Oh sure, I don't think jailing is the answer for most things... but there's a subset of people who think that free speech should be entirely unrestricted, and I also don't think that's the answer. I don't think anyone's really cracked this issue yet.
I was subject to a harassment campaign at one point, and blocks seemed to just stoke the flame. It eventually subsided when I disengaged from social media entirely for a while, but it felt like I was surrendering to the harassers. They're the ones restricting my speech at that point.
So I get why people refuse to "disengage" – it feels like someone responding to IRL harassment by telling you not to leave your house, it just doesn't seem fair.
> Isn't this indicative of a serious problem though? If there were places IRL where the average person is subjected to a constant barrage of callousness it wouldn't continue to exist, would it?
Haha, "if"? You must live in a very different world than I do. Junior high school, the old guys running the local hardware store, almost every cubicle farm in the financial services industry, the city of New York... I could give endless of examples where indifference, callousness, or even plain old mean-spiritedness is the prevalent culture.
A person who has not experienced some form of this is not ready for the real world. Humans are wonderful, but also complete bastards and that's something that will never change.
When they cross certain lines they become illegal harassment, and there are ways to handle them.
I've worked with people who have been fired for "cubicle farm in the financial services industry" type of behavior, and it's becoming less and less acceptable as time goes on.
In high school a group of boys was expelled for writing homophobic slurs on another student's locker.
I lived in NYC for a period of time, and it's a cake walk compared to spending time on social media. I did feel in danger at one point on the subway, but I was also helped out of that situation by a bystander... and the police were able to ID the individual with security footage (who had a history of causing problems and who I later provided testimony against in court).
With the anonymity of the internet, levers like this are often non-existent. Local police often don't even have the capability to understand it, let alone investigate it. I attempted to report death threats (which contained my home address) at one point and was referred to the FBI (which as far as I know, did nothing).
The mechanisms we have for handling problems like this IRL certainly aren't perfect, many people fall through the cracks, and mechanisms like the police can be very problematic in their own right... but the only time I've felt entirely helpless was when dealing with anonymous online harassment. It became very clear early on that no one was going to do anything about it, and the only way out was to attempt to "not exist" online.
They are certainly illegal, but I've had very different experiences reporting IRL death threats versus online death threats.
Anecdotally it seems like law enforcement doesn't take online death threats seriously, and are incapable of determining legitimacy and origin. The lack of accountability seems to make it much more likely for death threats to happen online...
I've reported online threats containing my home and work addresses and they're basically shrugged off. If someone approached me in person and said the same thing the outcomes are very different.
> If there were places IRL where the average person is subjected to a constant barrage of callousness it wouldn't continue to exist, would it?
Are you suggesting that there are populated places that you can visit in real life where loudly shouting an arbitrary statement could not attract abuse?
If I went to a model train convention, carrying a giant sign explaining how childish and stupid I think model train enthusiasts are, do you think I would be subjected to a "constant barrage of callousness" until I left?
In the UK, "trolling" has been entirely defined (by a media and political class full of blue checks) as any angry response of the public against the wise observations of blue checks. It's entirely class-based. You don't have to threaten, you don't have to swear, you don't have to be ethnically, religiously, or sexually bigoted. You just have to strongly disagree. In fact, the more biting and incisive the comment, the bigger the perceived offense.
Entirely about nobodies embarrassing somebodies in public.
edit: this is a special meaning within the UK media and political classes. Generally, "trolls" are people who like to cause arguments online, and who can be judged by the ratio of the number of characters they type to the number of characters they cause to be typed. "Trolls" are not people who have an honest belief in what they are saying. It's only in the UK (AFAIK) where "troll" is defined by disagreement and exacerbated by tone.
>Are you suggesting that there are populated places that you can visit in real life where loudly shouting an arbitrary statement could not attract abuse?
I'm suggesting that if I were in a public place and had a person shouting obscenities at me everywhere I went... it's illegal harassment, and the person can be identified and prosecuted.
I've experienced both IRL and online harassment, and managed to stop IRL harassment through the legal system. I was only able to stop online harassment by hiding.
> I'm suggesting that if I were in a public place and had a person shouting obscenities at me everywhere I went... it's illegal harassment, and the person can be identified and prosecuted.
What does "hiding" mean here? Not posting on twitter?
Is this a law that will regulate bad words and not content? People would have far fewer objections to a blacklist of words you can't use in public.
Is the problem with somebody following you around IRL shouting obscenities at you the content? Is somebody following you around all day shouting positive affirmations not objectionable?
It means essentially removing myself from the internet. No public social media and hiring a company to get myself (i.e., address and phone number) removed from public data brokers (you can do it yourself, but it means hundreds of unique forms to fill out).
You seem to be hung up on "obscenities" but yes you are correct, it's not just obscenities... there are a lot of varieties of harassment. Following someone around and shouting anything at them is likely harassment IRL, but it seems less clear online when you can't conclusively determine if anonymous accounts are the same person.
> If there were places IRL where the average person is subjected to a constant barrage of callousness it wouldn't continue to exist, would it?
Did you not go to school with other children? Name-calling, exclusion, and what adults would call assault and physical abuse are par for the course among small children. Human beings have an instinctive ability to empathize with other people, but consistently applying that to all other people, even when it conflicts with other desires, is not part of our genetic programming, which is why it is a backbone teaching of all major religions. We start as tiny children who reflexively, instinctively hit and call names to express their desires, and we don't grow out of these tendencies so much as reduce them (on the one hand) and refine them.
Habitual bullies discover that they enjoy it when their bullying earns positive attention from other people, and they adjust their targets and tactics accordingly. In a setting where people like seeing sexual minorities persecuted, that's who they will target. In a setting where people like seeing racial minorities persecuted, that's who they will target. If you harbor any aggressive itch you are too timid or too "civilized" to scratch, you can bet the bullies in your social milieu will seek your approval by scratching it for you, and if we're against bullying, that's who it matters to call out, the people who are working for our approval.
> Isn't this indicative of a serious problem though?
Mostly, saying mean things doesn't rise to the level of legal interventions. There are plenty of IRL venues where people will say mean things (sports, comedy clubs, reproductive health clinics), and many venues where saying mean things will get you asked to stop or forced to leave.
If you say mean things on HN, you'll likely be asked to stop or forced to leave; but some sites don't make that part of their platform. Personally, I'm not going to participate in places where there's a lot of meanness, but that means I don't participate in a lot of popular sites.
>If you say mean things on HN, you'll likely be asked to stop or forced to leave; but some sites don't make that part of their platform. Personally, I'm not going to participate in places where there's a lot of meanness, but that means I don't participate in a lot of popular sites.
This is a good point. I don't think a lot of what's commonly said on twitter (or online in general) would fly if said in a physical business... and this disparity seems to embolden a lot of people online to just constantly say shitty things.
The principle of free speech does explicitly exclude repercussions. You can of course draw you conclusions and you are not forced to associate with anybody.
But the nature of the internet that potentially connects anyone to everyone else will have such cases, even just by cultural differences.
To believe you can have the same basis in every interpersonal interchange is naive. If that is hard for you, you can trivially easily withdraw from any discussion.
> In the past accountability seemed like a major factor.
The past status quo isn't desirable. You do not have to expose yourself to anything if you do not want to. But many people do not want to get back to that.
I do not like to associate with people that seems to be fond of prosecuting others for trifles. Yet I will make sure they are able to state their opinions.
The accountability is you have the option to block trolls, leave the site, or just ignore them. Pretty awesome because you surely couldn't so easily be rid of someone in physical life.
There's no requirement for you to subject yourself to a troll.
Back in my day it was a given that nerds would get their asses kicked by jocks. While I'm not in favor of this bill, your argument is extremely flimsy.
So does this mean if you participate in a twitter mob while in the UK you could be sent to jail? The way the law it written it sounds pretty board - an errant like or retweet (which is not necessarily any endorsement) could land you in hot water.
rule of subjectivity is, at the end of the day, rule of the powerful: when two parties disagree and the situation can be defined in primarily subjective terms, the most powerful party wins
by hiding behind outcast, oppressed or unpopular groups with often legitimate (though perhaps subjective, to an extent) grievances, the powerful are able to push through the subjective zeitgeist, which is then used to their advantage
What's subjective about it though? Do you think it is not possible by now for us to collectively come up with an objective definition of what trolling and abusive language is? To me it's pretty clear after spending just a few minutes on Twitter...
I don't understand, these decisions appear to be made by people appointed by democratically elected MPs? Are you making a different complaint about the democratic process? That's fine for you to do, but that seems to be unrelated to the topic.
So in the US, you get to choose from a group of politicians. All those politicians need money to run their campaigns. Those politicians get money from corporate interests to fund their campaigns. Therefore, nearly all politicians you are able to choose from have already been tainted by corporate money. Corporate interests don't just cut big checks and expect nothing in return.
Point being, this is a law that helps the powerful imprison people who criticize them disguised as a way to stop people from hurting other people's feelings. It won't be the sole purpose, I'm sure regular people can get people imprisoned who criticize them as well, but once the law is there, powerful people will use it to stifle criticism.
I really don't see how that's relevant here, if you really want to take that angle, then every law can be abused by corrupt officials. I agree with your complaint about that, corruption in politics is sadly nothing new. But that is a different problem to address, can we please discuss policy and not derail the discussion with cynicism about politicians? It's not interesting conversation and I feel like this is just shutting the discussion down.
If we are talking about laws, it is absolutely not irrelevant to talk about the people who will be enforcing them. This thread is about an extremely subjective law, and some people think that's a really bad idea because the people enforcing it will abuse it, because it's easy to do.
It would be impossible. If we had hard rules, like you couldn't say "Fuck Joe Biden," it would easily be circumvented with a coded language like "Let's go Brandon," and therefore useless. We would have to constantly be upgrading the language to accommodate all the coded language. Eventually lawmakers will get sick of fooling with it and it will either stop, being half baked, still under penalty of imprisonment; or they will make some umbrella law that basically restricts nearly all speech under penalty of imprisonment. It's got noble intentions, but really gets ugly when you start to map out implementation.
It's also has the "I know it when I see it," aura to it.
Sometimes shutting the discussion down is exactly the goal of such assertions "they're all the same". It happens often when the topic is too sensitive to handle constructively.
>I don't understand, these decisions appear to be made by people appointed by democratically elected MPs?
I assumed you were trying to say that since the law would be created "democratically," it was either just or can't be corrupted. In response, I explained how the democratic process works in the US, trying to say that just because we have a democratic process, that doesn't necessarily mean the people we elect to represent us do it in good faith. They represent the corporate interests who funded their war chest first and foremost and the citizenry who elected them incidentally. Democracy as currently in practice is very different from democracy in theory. I love the theory.
Let me try to make a bad analogy. Say you are in a union and it's time to vote for your union rep. There are 4 candidates and they are all mid and high level managers. Yes, they would be democratically elected, but the choice is limited to people who have a serious conflict of interest. It's unlikely you would be represented in good faith. Because of this, any law proposed we should be highly skeptical of as it likely isn't in our best interest but more in the best interest of "management," i.e. corporate interests.
>Are you making a different complaint about the democratic process? That's fine for you to do, but that seems to be unrelated to the topic.
See above.
So collectively, as a single voice, I think our politicians are using this as a way to censor the population and I collectively, as a single voice do not in any way support it. If people don't want to get their feelings hurt, they shouldn't go on Twitter or Facebook or talk to people in any way; otherwise, people probably have to get accustomed to getting their feelings hurt sometimes. It sucks, because nobody likes getting their feelings hurt, but the alternative is way worse.
I'm not trolling, I've personally suffered psychological harm from online abuse. There are many places on the internet that I'd like to go but can't because people are too abusive and nobody does anything about it. What am I supposed to do if people don't even want to talk about this or acknowledge that it's a real problem that we can solve?
Can you please have a conversation with me instead of accusing me of trolling? If you want to change my mind then I'm open to it, but this isn't the way to be convincing.
I get that you are trying to make me the butt of a joke, but you'll notice my original question was if we could come up with a objective definition. If you don't think we can then you could just say so.
You're not wrong, you're just an asshole. They're asking in what is obviously good faith for a cooperative conversation. To which you respond with an attempt to distract, followed up with "Burden is on you." Something they've already admitted given they're seeking input on the topic. I can't imagine why they wouldn't want to offer a solution for your evaluation. You're clearly trying to help them out right? You know by suggesting solutions or opinions about problems that will need to be solved? Oh no wait... you're explicitly taking no position at all. Very brave...
Because I don't think these places (Twitter, Facebook, etc) need to be places where people are too abusive. My impression is that a lot of people who are there aren't happy with the abuse there either.
So you're trying to make the world a better place? In which Twitter becomes the better version of Twitter that you believe it can be? I wish you the best of luck.
Well no, I'm just trying to get the conversation started because the article mentioned that this was a pain point for people. If you have suggestions I'd love to hear it. I don't have all the answers, as I mentioned before this is something that needs to be decided collectively.
This isn't a hard concept. I don't willingly walk into a mine field, but some people do. I'd totally accompany them if I also had any of the dozens of mine detecting, or detonating tools, vehicles.
You may have a moral obligation to stop people from being hurt, but you have no moral obligation to stop people who willingly choose to be hurt, or accept the risk it.
You are in control of the media you consume online. If you don't like the online community standards, leave and block that community. Or develop the equivalent of mine detection or explosive resistance coping mechanisms for verbal for visual abuse. Before you walk into the communities that permit hostility.
I've already been doing that for decades and I hope you can understand how it's impractical to do that. Social media has network effects, that's the whole purpose for it to exist and some people just expect you to meet them where they're at.
I totally understand that. I consider myself fortunate enough to have learned to ignore it while a teenager (thanks "I'm Offended", if you know, you know :D). That's not to say things don't bother me, or that there's no one living in my head rent free right now. Only that ignoring vast the majority of things I don't like is a learnable skill. Such that I can safely visit any website I want without worrying about it running my day, or causing other psychological harm.
When I was a kid my teachers used to say to me "sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never hurt you" when another kid said something mean.
Were they wrong? Yes, as an adult I've found that words can actually be quite hurtful. But usually from people I already know.
Strangers? I don't think strangers can hurt with words, they are strangers after all, unless they get your real identity. I think a lot of the problem people have with "trolling" is actually caused by self-doxing. When one person is anonymous and another person is under their real name, it creates a power imbalance.
Realistically, people can post on the internet from 200-odd jurisdictions, this is not something that the law could or should be preventing.
Those teachers were very often enablers. And to add to it, had they tried to actually deal with issues instead of blaming victim or expecting the victim to just take it, the overall situation might have been better.
The words in fact can hurt and always did. Men used to kill each other over who said what. Words can damage reputations and make other kids mistreat the victim too.
It is easier to say the above sentence then to deal with kids verbally abuse others. It is easier to tell the victim to shut up then to teach the victim to defend himself, to undo damage to their self confidence and so on.
What can someone actually say to you online to effectively intimidate you? I have had many people try in the last 20 years, but the basic problem is that they’re just an anonymous web surfer and so am I.
Also: what about boycotts? Is this speech not designed to intimidate an organization into doing the thing or not doing the thing the organizers of the boycott want them to do (or not to do). A lot of speech which is designed to intimidate is perfectly legal because intimidating others is a valid tactic within reason. That’s also subjective, but when you’re in a position of power over someone, you can intimidate the crap out of someone without coming close to say, death threats, rape threats or the threat of doing anything actually illegal.
The "is meant" part is unprovable. Trolling is often about sarcasm that obfuscates the intent. We can use the recently famous "let's go brandon" as an example - the intent is clear, but unprovable even with inquisition methods.
To the mentally fragile, even the most innocuous statements are taken as intended intimidation. If this law is passed, how long before someone who states that there is a biological difference between men and women will be dragged before the court by complainants who claim that this factual statement was an "attempt to intimidate"? The internet is filled with people who openly state that, very literally and sincerely that "silence is violence" - this is not the atmosphere conducive to a law that criminalizes people who feel intimidated.
The definition of "psychological harm" will vary by person, which is inconsistent with the enforcement of law. How one person reacts to a traumatic experience will vary vastly between other people.
There can be no standard legal definition, so what you'll get is psychologists and therapists testifying their opinion with the outcome that someone goes to jail.
But don't we already call doctors as expert witnesses? And don't we already define various kinds of harm as varying by the person? None of that seems to to be controversial.
Psychology and medicine are very different things. For instance, a doctor will be made to explain how another doctor screwed up a surgery so bad that it qualifies as "reckless endangerment". This is backed by reproducible studies and academic rigor on a given subject. Psychology lacks both reproducible studies and academic rigor, hence you'd have opinions.
Psychological harm smells to me a lot like "bite mark analysis" which it took quite a long while for us to undo in the United States. It also put countless people in prison for crimes they didn't commit.
It is so difficult, and so easy to get wrong, that several hundred years ago a collection of law makers had to get together and write down in no uncertain terms that the government should never do it.
This was far from a universal sentiment because many world governments want no part of a system where the governed can object to the governance. Worse, understanding of the idea, which requires a certain level of specific historical education, has diminished greatly in recent years. Worse still is the active attack on the idea by those that stand to gain from creating yet another power structure.
That's not to say that Twitter, for example, shouldn't moderate it. But woe to us if some committee ("tribunal?") in Congress be given that power.
And this is why the trend is to remove factual information from trials rather than add some. For example, in many Western countries, it is now forbidden to present during a trial the SMS exchanged with a “victim of rape” before meeting, and to seize the messages between her and her friends, because it would cause psychological harm to this person. So the only remaining evidence is he-said-she-said, which is prone for interpretation.
It is also forbidden to take notes as a member of a jury. If a member is not sure, he should ask again. Which opens the way for rhetoric tricks, not factual information.
So what happens now?
If some guys ends up on the receiving end of regret charges, what can they do to defend themselves?
Wear body cams to record all intercourse and save as a proof of consent?
Ok, you are suggesting what I said was false, so I am researching sources:
== UK
Search for “New NPCC consent form”. Since 2020, seizing texts can only happen with the complainant’s consent, and the form highlights that there should be no repercussion if consent is not given. Therefore, it doesn’t alleviate the main criticism of false accusations: The ability for the accused to prove his innocence.
I didn’t immediately find proof (searched Australia, US and Canada) but the general narrative that having her phone searched is a trauma for the victim, and therefore her phone should only be searched with her consent.
> Ok, you are suggesting what I said was false, so I am researching sources:
Not really, just before jumping to FUD it's good to take a step back and research.
> Search for “New NPCC consent form”. Since 2020, seizing texts can only happen with the complainant’s consent, and the form highlights that there should be no repercussion if consent is not given. Therefore, it doesn’t alleviate the main criticism of false accusations: The ability for the accused to prove his innocence.
Right, so if you're the defendant you can provide your own evidence because its YOUR content. Obviously there should be consent involved if you as the defendant say "go search the complaint's device"
The solution to that is to have multiple passports, and have a relatively location-independent lifestyle. Not ideal, but given many Western countries are now classified as failing democracies, it's getting increasingly less optional.
> For example, in many Western countries, it is now forbidden to present during a trial the SMS exchanged with a “victim of rape” before meeting, and to seize the messages between her and her friends, because it would cause psychological harm to this person.
In which western country is this forbidden, and what is the legal basis for it, do you have more information about this?
Quite the opposite at least where I did it a few years ago. Your notes are not allowed to leave the court. If you use your own notebook then you will have to say goodbye to it after the trial. Our court provided writing material to all jurors, we didn't have to ask for it, and we were encouraged to take notes.
All notes have to stay in the court room or deliberation room, this is to protect the privacy of the jury deliberations - jurors are sworn to a lifetime of secrecy over deliberations, and are not allowed to discuss the case outside of court while it is ongoing.
> It is also forbidden to take notes as a member of a jury. If a member is not sure, he should ask again. Which opens the way for rhetoric tricks, not factual information.
My quick googling shows that it is legal in many places in America [0], and encouraged by some judges.
The CPS uses definitions agreed with the National Police Chiefs' Council to identify racist or religious incidents/crimes and to monitor the decisions and outcomes:
"Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race"
or
"Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person's religion or perceived religion."
Wow, talk about presumption of innocence... there are blasphemy laws in some countries that make "public actions committed with the express purpose of insulting religious beliefs" a crime which is actually a very sensible definition per se: first of all, it excludes personal correspondence and private blogs (unless the blog is particularly popular), and second, go and try to prove that intent. That requires linguistic expertise and the experts, except in very egregious cases, tend to write opinions of "nope, they just were emotionally expressing their opinions without specifically addressing anyone or any group in particular" kind.
Great point, it's strange how people who clearly saw "think of the children" as an attempt to regulate the internet in the past, are supporting such attempts in the name of other vulnerable groups now.
It feels like this is at least one destination under harm prevention rhetoric. I'm all for holding mobs accountable, but I don't think this is the thing. If you are on social media doing bullying or participating in mobs while calling it activism, what you need isn't jail time it's help. I suspect a lot of these folks are just lonely.
I call BS. We already have about 100 times more laws than we have the capacity to prosecute so it's just noise. We already have laws about malicious communications but yet social media is still swimming with incredibly malicious content.
Insulate Britain had a number of injunctions taken against them to not block main roads and when they do, they get arrested - 1 of them saying they had been arrested 11 times. Now regardless of whether you agree with them or not, the enforcement of these headline grabbers is terrible.
Once we have enough police enforcing things consistently and as strictly as necessary then I will worry about a dystopia, until then, it's just more attempts to win votes and is just noise.
Inconsistent application of unjust laws is maybe even worse than them being applied to everyone, now you have a great reason to discount the people being abused if they don't agree with your politics.
Inconsistency is terrible regardless of how high-quality the law is. Law is about setting boundaries but if you see everyone else breaking a law and then you get prosecuted for breaking it yourself, you don't create anything except resentment.
I think poorly written and inconsistently applied laws is a big part of why the UK has become so selfish. Easier just to worry about me and mine rather than what I think society wants.
> I think poorly written and inconsistently applied laws is a big part of why the UK has become so selfish
It's much deeper than that. The UK's national identity is tied up in things that no longer exist: the British Empire and WW2. That was the peak, and everything since has been a decline.
People have become selfish because the British nation has evaporated. It barely exists. There is no sense of being compatriots, because there is nothing to be compatriots of.
The UK has arguably had an authoritarian bias for a long time, under the guise of being paternalistic.
I wouldn't say it's always a bad thing, as many times this does work in the society's favour (e.g. consumer protection laws, various other regulations), and the loosening of the restriction works against it (e.g. the course of events that led to the Grenfell Tower fire).
Of course, you also get stuff like this, the various porn bills that surface every few years, and the Snooper's Charter. This is the real Nanny State stuff.
The UK simply has a different perspective on how government should work. Arguably because it's had a thousand years to figure it out.
I'd go even further and say most western countries, because I think the US and EU are headed in a similar direction.
My guess is that they see trouble ahead and want to get a firmer grip on power, so they're trying to get the kid gloves off as stealthily as possible. If they could, they'd go full CCP before you can say "communo-fascism", but they can't, because then they'd have to deal with too much push back at once.
You don't actually understand China or Australia if you think they are similar. They are not.
They have similar puppets they put on their hands to make the general population think a certain way, they may follow the same single act, but they're not similar.
You just described one trait they have in common in terms of similarity.
Of course they are different but have certain similarities.
The EU? Not so much.
Everyone has a couple traits in common. For example the EU regulate several very minute things that anyone in the EU must follow. Like how the Chinese regulate the sale (or ban of) certain luxuries.
The UK is a monarchy. Everyone has always simply been subjects of the King/Queen. Their 'freedom and democracy' has always been a façade, used by the monarchs to convince them they have some rights.
The worst bit is, and I say this as someone who is and always has been very left wing, that the current left wing culture are actually making this possible.
They've winged and winged about anyone tweeting anything controversial about a perceived 'vulnerable minority' and this has always been the end game. They want people to be punished for causing offense.
I can't believe these morons go around joining groups like antifa, protesting against authoritarianism and yet spend half their energy campaigning for laws that would be an authoritarian governments wet dream.
The amount of in-fighting over a small disagreement is astounding, as is the conflation between "disagreement" and "causing harm". If you disagree on some intellectual framework regarding gender identity – to name something controversial – then this absolutely does not equal "discrimination". It's a massive distraction over the actual issues that matter, never mind turning people off from the left in general.
It's kind of amazing because people in the West live in the most free and non-discriminatory society in all of recorded history. Yes, there are still problems and it's not perfect and these problems require adressing, but try being gay 50 years ago, or in most non-Western countries. We really do have it quite good.
There is kind of a curious parallel with Trump's "Make America Great Again!"-rhetoric where he presents the US as a kind of dystopian hellscape, which is not that dissimilar to how it's presented among some of these people. My take-away from this is that there actually are some deep-rooted problems in the way we organize our society, and that the dissatisfaction, frustration, and anger over this manifests itself in different ways. Brexit is another interesting example, because it always seemed to me not so much about the EU, but more a general dissatisfaction about the state of things.
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This is hardly unsubstantiated as it is a widespread acknowledged problem. [1] It should also be noted that this is not the first time I criticized the UK's 'unique' take on justice. The reception then was quite different however. Is moderation at the whim of the mob? Perhaps 'joke of a country is a bit harsh' but I can't think of a better description of such lopsided priorities.
I didn't say it was unsubstantiated—rather that your comment was unsubstantive—because you swerved into a classic flamewar topic with a provocative swipe. That's clearly against the site guidelines.
Provocative yes but not unprecedented. As I said, in the past I had virtually the same commentary, UK legal specific and certainly inflammatory, but then it was popular and unmoderated. What conclusion should be drawn but that moderation is by mob?
Problem is there is almost no opposition to that. In almost every country we see liberal parties failing to defend liberties.
On the contrary, they quickly side with pearl clutchers that have no problem with broad user surveillance and in some cases even champion laws that selectively punish one or two unsavory people in hope it might be seen as a precedent. Corporations primarily think of their advertisers that dislike any controversy.
I think ultimately we need different platforms for kids and adults. If you have a problem with comments that undeniably sometimes cross several lines, you might need to visit the former. That said, experience says that some people aren't content if there is disapproved content anywhere, but those need to be ignored.
(Obviously real life is not so binary, but since freedoms are abused to inflict harm on others, removing the source of harm necessitates removing the freedom that led to it)
It isn't a trade off. That's the falseness of setting it up as two mutually exclusive and exhaustive choices. There are better ways to make a point than hyperbole.
Explain how it isn't a tradeoff. Give me one example that supports your stance please.
It's a sliding a scale. You get to move the marker one way or the other. Whatever you do for the "greater good" will inherently remove rights from someone.
That took rights and freedom away from certain people. We've all agreed that taking the right to hold slaves away is better for society just like taking the right to murder away is better for society. However, that doesn't mean you didn't take a freedom away from a group of people.
I'm saying freedom from slavery was an increase in freedom and a greater good. That's the point. A net increase in both. That's why it's a false dichotomy.
How are they not mutually exclusive? This is a profoundly fundamental idea about human freedom.
You cannot both grant people the freedom to act — even if that means they might use that freedom to harm others — and simultaneously, ensure that nobody can come to harm.
I don't think this dichotomy to be false. They are competing concepts at some point. Another example is freedom and equality, which is also a hot topic if you will.
But I don't think anyone on internet platforms is in dire need of government protection. Perhaps kids that get groomed, but not adults in any capacity that can trivially withdraw from the problem.
The core problem is that some freedoms also restrict freedoms. For example, my freedom to play music as loud as I want at 4am restricts my neighbour's freedom to have a good nights rest.
Similarly, my freedom to go out on the street and chant "gas the Jews! Gas the Jews!" would restrict the freedom of Jewish people to participate in normal life without fear. And I don't think these fears are ungrounded, or unreasonable, and can be simply dismissed.
Pretty much everyone is in favour of more freedom, across the ideological spectrum. The conflict is the disagreement where the balance lies between "give people the freedom to do what they want" vs. "people using their freedoms to restrict the freedoms of others".
And this is why I'm never going to move to Europe. My jokes would be considered "obscene" or "indecent" or something and I'd be thrown in prison. At least here in the States, for now, the government is letting the private companies perform the censorship, and not imprisoning people for tasteless humor.
> Meechan was arrested on suspicion of breaching the Communications Act 2003.[20] On 19 March 2018, Meechan was convicted of breaching the act by Sheriff Derek O'Carroll at Airdrie Sheriff Court.[21] The court ruled that Meechan's claim that the video was a joke intended for his girlfriend "lacked credibility" as Meechan's girlfriend did not subscribe to the YouTube channel to which the video was posted.
In some countries legal bases were set for imprisoning people after jokes.
Cassandra Vera Paz, Spanish, aged 22 during the event, was charged in 2016 with "injury to victims of terrorism", in the context of legislation "against the praising of terrorism", after she posted jokes on twitter - the homicide through explosives of Luis Carrero Blanco, ally to General Franco, by the Basque separatist group ETA, was related to a (NASA like) "space programme". She was condemned in 2017 to spend one year in prison (plus a year of "absolute disqualification" from public offices and aid). The ruling was reversed in 2018 by the Supreme Court, which called the jokes socially and morally reprehensible but not sufficient for penal sanction.
Granddaughter Lucia Carrero Blanco reportedly wrote «I’m scared of a society in which freedom of expression, however regrettable it may be, can lead to jail sentences».
So I'm actually Basque and I've gotta say this is a pretty specific scenario.
This is part of a very reprehensible and long history of fighting against household terrorism, said history includes things such as torture on innocents or state terrorism.
On top of that, the National Assembly has a bad reputation for pulling this kind of abusive stunts specifically when it's about "praising terrorism" and I don't think I personally know a single person who actually supports this. This is probably why the Supreme Court reversed the decision.
On the other hand I do know many people who tell jokes about Carrero Blanco, or in even worse taste, Irene Villa, a journalist who lost both her legs in another attack with explosives from ETA. Remarkably Irene Villa is on record stating that she enjoys and supports jokes such as "What does Irene Villa do when her friends go and wax her legs? She varnishes hers".
I believe this last bit to be relevant because no doubt that could be considered brutally offensive, literally making fun of a disabled person, but there is nobody offended here, it is, instead, recognized that humor is an important way of coping with a difficult reality, and the history of Basque terrorism is indeed a difficult one.
You mean the UK, not Europe in general. The UK is not even part of the EU anymore and has been steering towards authoritarianism for two decades already - together with the US as their closest ally.
Plus, a lot of these ideas about some opinion "causing harm" or "silence is violence" and all of that are imported from the US. Even though it's not enacted in US law, the ideological roots are firmly there.
Politics is the US' worst export product, whether it's the unhinged right and their nonsense or the unhinged left and their nonsense. I wish fewer people would pay attention to it.
The EU commission wants broad surveillance laws and doesn't really behave any differently, the implementation is different in detail, but moves towards the same ambitions. They don't understand the costs and are just slow to implement the same dragnet surveillance as the US did.
The difference is that even if it's considered socially unacceptable in the US it doesn't result in fines or imprisonment. Sounds like a much better deal to me.
Thankfully, psychological harm is incredibly easy to establish, and therefore this could never be misused. All you have to do is ask someone, "were your feelings hurt?" and there you have it.
Plus the investigating authority has discretion as to whether or not the complaint is credible and should be pursued. Of course these decisions won't be simple minded reflections the prevailing moral panics. Perish the thought.
The proposed regulation makes so much sense that it sees safe to assume that anyone arguing against it is likely acting in bad faith. Bad faith arguments on a topic so near and dear to my hear make me feel attacked and unsafe! Hopefully be this policy will help reign such antisocial discourse.
<Two hard looking men are in a jail cell. Covered with scars and tattoos>
What are you in for?
Grand theft auto. You?
Bank robbery.
<They look over to the unassuming third man in the the cell>
New guy. What are you in for?
Er, <visible hesitation> I suggested that the UK's new social media harassment law was a satirical publication. Apparently it hurt one of the author's feelings.
<The first two men share a quick glance and then move away from the third one quickly>
- you are held responsible for other people's feelings, and for their feelings as a result of your words and actions, and:
- anything that causes anyone to feel bad, is looked down upon by the collective
Is tyranny by the emotionally stunted.
The fundamental problem with it, is it makes society more enmeshed (a pathological relationship dynamic). People start caring more about going with the grain, the mainstream opinion, and rejecting the troublemakers, because they don't want to be cast out too; and they self-censor more. Humans are beautiful in their diversity, their wildness, and their distrust of authority, and there's been a definite attempt to domesticate people on all fronts (funny, there was a discussion here days ago about domesticated animals having 15-35% smaller brains). Societal cohesion is the Borg, not a utopia. And I just watched Demolition Man yesterday (fantastic movie), this immediately reminds me of the "verbal morality fines" they hand out.
The most fundamental piece of applicable psychology is the idea that you are responsible for your own thoughts, feelings, and actions, period. You are responsible for making yourself happy, for asserting yourself, for setting any boundaries you choose. People on Twitter can just block, or mute, or turn off their DMs for people they don't follow. What's wrong with that? Now there's a human right to use Twitter unhindered? They just spent the last decade telling us there wasn't!
Besides it seems clear we've already swung far too far in the "style over content" direction. People hate on Nassim Taleb because he dares insult lobbyists and people he considers scientific frauds; would he be put in jail if he lived in the UK?
Big Tech is being used to engineer a new kind of society, and I don't like it. It seems Web 3.0 is the only thing able to fight this dynamic.
> The proposed law change will shift the focus on to the “harmful effect” of a message rather than if it contains “indecent” or “grossly offensive” content, which is the present basis for assessing its criminality.
I'm feeling very harmed after reading your comment. I realize the content's of your message are objectively harmless, but I "feel" harmed. So...off to jail you go.
---
But on a more serious note. Like you said I it's insane that we have come to the point where what you actually say, you intentions, are completely irrelevant, it's all about how your message is perceived. What are the guardrails here?
Harmful effect can be anything. I could plagiarize the top ShowHN post from yesterday, post it here and get called out. Then try to get all the commenters prosecuted because my feelings were hurt? Is this seriously how this law works?
Hell an even more extreme example could be "hey it's really nice and sunny outside today", and someone will comment "I identify as darkness, this is hurtful to my people". Am I headed to the slammer for saying that the weather was nice?
> we have come to the point where what you actually say, you intentions, are completely irrelevant, it's all about how your message is perceived
The way this is typically framed is "impact matters more than intent". Like if you weren't watching where you were walking and accidentally stepped on someone's foot. You didn't _intend_ to harm them, but the overall _impact_ was that you did harm them.
As you rightly point out though, the elephant in the room is that impact in this context is not falsifiable. Unlike stepping on someone's foot where you could use instruments to measure how many capillaries were broken or if the bone is cracked, with words and feelings you can't actually empirically prove harm was done which is why I think enacting laws and policies that directly correlate with impact is a recipe for disaster...
IMO the best way to deal with impact has to be at the cultural level. "Hey, I find swear words offensive, can you stop?" "Oh sure, sorry about that, I won't swear around you". Bam, problem solved.
A society that transitions to: "Hey, I find swear words offensive, I'm going to report you to the psychological harm police" is one on the fast track to dystopia.
Do you feel that user "clairity" harmed you? If so I will begin the paperwork for detainment and evaluation for reeducation by the Internet Feelings Agency (IFA).
as happens so often, basketball provides a microcosm. fouls are called (and varying penalties assessed) for illegal moves that lead to an unfair advantage. implicit in that is that intent matters. many times, a foul isn’t assessed for an illegal maneuver because the intent to gain advantage wasn’t there (contact was happenstance) or no advantage was gained. however, some fouls are so dangerous (e.g., undercutting a shooter), that intent does not matter, and a foul is called even when done completely unintentionally.
as always, we have to consider the nuance and avoid overly broad statements/policies.
Uhm... Intent had nothing to do with a foul. The idea is the move is illegal because it can give you an advantage. It doesn't matter if you intend to or not. A lot of the fouls in basketball are not intentional. A common foul is attempting to block a shot and hitting the shooter's arm. No harm was intended, but a foul was called.
About the only time intent matters in basketball is got a three point attempt.
that's completely missing the discretion refs have in calling fouls. if they didn't employ discretion, you'd have a foul every 5 seconds, rendering the game unwatchable/unplayable (e.g., the rule changes that the nba made this season). intent and (unfair) advantage are crucial to that discretion. again, nuance.
>IMO the best way to deal with impact has to be at the cultural level.
IMO the only reasonable way to deal with impact is to limit the law to purely physical impact. It should never be the business of any government to attempt to regulate, mandate, restrict or punish behavior based on the thought processes or feelings of anyone.
Not sure exactly how to quantify "physical impact", but in many US states, the crime of misdemeanor battery is defined as any "unwanted" contact, such that cases without any apparent physical harm become crimes based on thought processes and feelings of the aggrieved party.
> You are responsible for making yourself happy, for asserting yourself, for setting any boundaries you choose. People on Twitter can just block, or mute, or turn off their DMs for people they don't follow.
This solution does not account for the following ways a troll can harass you:
* sockpuppets pinging you,
* sockpuppets impersonating you,
* sockpuppets mass reporting you, thereby suspending your accounts
* finding people you are friends/family with and sending them rape/death/bomb threats or doing the above,
* finding where you work and sending your workplace similar threats,
* putting up websites involving your legal name and face to make allegations you're a child predator/criminal optimized for search engines.
It might seem callous, and it might be (and I know some people have poor mental health at times and social media onslaughts won't help) but my solution is to not let things affect me. If Viktor Frankl could do it in death camps, I think it's something everyone can rely on. You can also become the heel, become the "villain", and use that abuse to gain influence rather than lose it; most social media abuse is unjustified so there's nothing unethical about this. The alternative is having people go to jail or get a suspended sentence because they insulted J.K Rowling in a tweet.
Honestly I like to hope there is a middle ground between "insulting a public figure is grounds for jailtime" and "sending constant rape and bomb threats to non-public figures and all of their family for years on end is a perfectly legal thing to do that people should just get used to, I mean, if someone could endure literal genocide someone else should endure constant threats to their and their social circle's safety".
You are without a doubt a public figure if you put yourself on social media. Many people have warned against oversharing and have stated that people will want regulation when they get exposed to the negative side, the reason why PR agencies exist. But these laws would affect everybody.
Honestly half of that is already illegal and the other half is more of a problem with how social media fundamentally works. The idea of making laws so someone doesn't spam pings is preposterous.
> The most fundamental piece of applicable psychology is the idea that you are responsible for your own thoughts, feelings, and actions, period. You are responsible for making yourself happy, for asserting yourself, for setting any boundaries you choose. People on Twitter can just block, or mute, or turn off their DMs for people they don't follow. What's wrong with that? Now there's a human right to use Twitter unhindered? They just spent the last decade telling us there wasn't!
You should try telling this to those who get abused online. I think people who regularly get rape threats and racial abuse, many of whom are calling for such legislation ( recently there have been numerous cases with black footballers and also some with female journalists), have a slightly higher priority than people who just want to insult freely without fear of consequences. Considering people have committed suicide over online harassment, it's not as simple as "just block the baddies".
Someone hurling racial slurs on Twitter or sending rape threats, from the comfort of their home without any credibility, isn't a "credible threat", but isn't insignificant.
We currently (in the US, anyway) have laws against harassment and threats. They may not be well-enforced, but we do have those laws. Adding additional, vague laws will not help with enforcement, but it would open the door for authorities to prosecute lower and lower levels of 'harmful' behavior which go well beyond what you would want.
The solution is to crack down hard on the real harm, based on the many laws we already have on the books.
I can't speak for more than myself, but here's an alternative viewpoint: as a female that fits into other undisclosed minorities, and as an erotic artist who regularly gets threats (comes with the package) - I am far more afraid of the consequences of this dystopian line of thinking than I am of the occasional hate mobs. There are tools out there to deal with mobs/threats, even if it's unpleasant, but giving puritans a legal leverage to take down my art (and anyone who's creative work is remotely controversial) is going to wreck an unholy amount of damage. The typical line of attack is claiming that our art is "harmful" because of BDSM content, and the proposed legistlation would just reinforce that.
I feel like you mean the best in your heart, but would encourage anyone to think deeply before white knighting for minorities. A lot of times well meaning laws can have disastrous consequences in smothering less-powerful voices (laws against "immoral" content referring to anything sexual online regularly making things worse for actual sex workers, for instance). The ACLU has a long list of historical incidences where "legal" censorship ended up hurting civil rights activists, queer activists and creatives, and too many other groups to name.
> I feel like you mean the best in your heart, but would encourage anyone to think deeply before white knighting for minorities. A lot of times well meaning laws can have disastrous consequences in smothering less-powerful voices (laws against "immoral" content referring to anything sexual online regularly making things worse for actual sex workers, for instance). The ACLU has a long list of historical incidences where "legal" censorship ended up hurting civil rights activists, queer activists and creatives, and too many other groups to name.
Absolutely, especially in clown shitfests like the UK. That doesn't mean people who enjoy racially abusing teenagers on Twitter should just be left to do so. There's a middle ground between banning anything anyone might deem "offensive" (like erotica or BDSM) and the wild west.
>I think people who regularly get rape threats and racial abuse, many of whom are calling for such legislation ( recently there have been numerous cases with black footballers and also some with female journalists), have a slightly higher priority than people who just want to insult freely without fear of consequences.
They don't have higher priority than the rest of society, which enjoy an important lack of authoritarianism in this regard. It's not about wanting to insult freely, but about the right to offend.
I think inherent in the right to speak is the possibility to say things which risk some other person experiencing (or claiming) offense.
Perhaps I claim to be genuinely offended/insulted by speech in the form of a haiku. You can’t prove that my claimed offense/insult is not genuine, yet it would be ridiculous to ban such speech or prosecute it.
I think there is therefore a necessary middle ground of speech which is legal but for which someone claims it offends them. If it offends some people, see xkcd 1357.
No one has a freedom to not be offended. It they did, then it would be impossible to have free speech. As there is no way to know if your speech won't offend everyone.
This proposed law is discriminatory against autistic people (of which I am one) and, possibly, other people who, due to difficulty in reading a room or difficulty in self-censoring or difficulty in separating fact from imagination, might say or post offensive things without intending to cause hurt. (Or, maybe, without intending to hurt anyone who actually exists, as opposed to their imagined enemies.) I could also add that it's discriminatory against people who were raised in certain environments, but I've noticed that "They were raised that way" isn't seen as a valid defense, as it's apparently viewed as axiomatic that everyone has a chance to revise all of their implicit biases before posting to Twitter.
Is it morally appropriate to get together a group of your friends and pressure someone to commit suicide on social media? By your logic, it seems that it is; their suicidal reaction to malicious and intentional verbal abuse is not anyone else's problem but their own.
Many people seem to feel otherwise, and there are laws in place in various regions as a result. Are they wrong to choose to restrict your speech in favor of the collective good? If not, then what is the dividing line between "verbal abuse is okay" and "verbal abuse is not okay"? If it merely drives them to self-harm rather than suicide, is that morally acceptable, in some way that causing suicide is not?
Societies have a long-standing tradition of restricting individual behaviors for the collective good. Wishing that societies wouldn't this is hopeless, because it seems like every society that doesn't restrict individual behaviors to some degree ends up becoming a textbook example of how not run a society.
I read your moral position here as "if you are too frail to resist someone's words, you don't deserve protection from their verbal abuse with malicious intent". If I have misunderstood how your moral reasoning applies to the topic under discussion — trolls willfully causing psychological harm on the Internet — please help me understand where I've misapplied your logic.
>Is it morally appropriate to get together a group of your friends and pressure someone to commit suicide on social media? By your logic, it seems that it is; their suicidal reaction to malicious and intentional verbal abuse is not anyone else's problem but their own.
Did you intend to pressure them to do that? If you acted with that INTENT, and external evidence proves it, then NO, by OP's logic, that abuse is the perpetrator's problem.
>Societies have a long-standing tradition of restricting individual behaviors for the collective good.
> I read your moral position here as "if you are too frail to resist someone's words, you don't deserve protection from their verbal abuse with malicious intent"
I’m not the original parent, but I read (and share) the position as:
Barring intent by the speaker to inflict direct and immediate physical harm, if you are too frail to maintain your mental health in the face of someone else’s speech (or you pretend to be), then you are not served — and neither is justice, fairness, or truth — by the state applying its monopoly on violence to forcibly silence others at your behest.
Instead, each individual is personally responsible for their own mental well-being, while the state’s responsibility extends no further than offering services and support to help enable your own individual resiliency.
In the case of the UK's laws, they are targeting people with specific intent to cause psychological harm. That's a critical component of "trolling": if no harm was caused to the abused party, then the trolls wouldn't bother, because they're fixated on hurting others for personal pleasure. So, then, "barring intent" is an invalid condition for this discussion, right?
Your position presupposes the guilt and innocence of both parties.
The individual claiming “psychological harm” can just as easily be the perpetrator, and psychological harm will be inflicted on the victim by the state when they’re arrested for upsetting someone with narcissistic personality disorder.
It’s not necessarily magical, but we call those devices “judges” and “juries” here in the states, referring to those whose roles in the legal system include judging someone’s intentions. They usually do so without widespread access to telepathy or divination, and so too their UK counterparts.
There are problems with that system aside from that. The UK specifically will always have to content the case when they put a fine on someone making a pup doing an unfavorable gesture as a joke. It wasn't a good joke in itself, but it really lived by the reaction.
Incorrect. Judges regularly evaluate the intentions of non-criminals where no crime has been committed in family courts and in cases of contract law (disagreement is not unlawful), and juries have the ability of jury equity (UK) or nullification (US) to declare someone's actions as non-criminal even if the actions they are accused of are accepted as fact and are (by definition of law) unlawful. There is also "contempt of court", in which a judge may declare anyone criminal for refusing to comply with the judge's orders.
This all demonstrates that judges and juries are familiar with evaluating intentions and criminality within the frameworks of law provided. A framework of law may declare certain speech as unlawful (such as obscenity or slander) may declare intentions a key factor in criminality, and the systems of law that judge the legality and criminality of that speech are already in place in the UK (and US) to support laws that criminalize speech with malicious intent.
Things like slander and libel require clear demonstration that you've been damaged monetarily etc.
I don't see how you can clearly show damages from a person deciding to commit suicide or feeling bad because of trolls. Prove it.
Regardless, at the end of the day I don't really care whether there's a legal framework in place. I don't agree that it's helpful to society at all and I'm going to err on the side that almost no speech harmful to anyone and should NEVER result in imprisonment. There's almost no road where criminalizing trolls on the internet leads to a better society or helps mentally ill people.
I've laid out my concerns about the arguments presented by HN commenters, and laid out how societal structures permit such a new law to be passed.
The original article does a credible job of explaining why a new law may be passed. You may agree or disagree, or you may require more information than is yet available, but that's for you to determine on your own.
>Is it morally appropriate to get together a group of your friends and pressure someone to commit suicide on social media?
You are mistaking morality with legality. Morally its wrong, legally it shouldn't be.
>I read your moral position here as "if you are too frail to resist someone's words, you don't deserve protection from their verbal abuse with malicious intent".
Again, mistaking morality with legality. I'm not the OP, but that's my legal position, though it's not my moral position.
>Societies have a long-standing tradition of restricting individual behaviors for the collective good. Wishing that societies wouldn't this is hopeless, because it seems like every society that doesn't restrict individual behaviors to some degree ends up becoming a textbook example of how not run a society.
All coherent societies restrict individual behavior for the collective good. That doesn't mean that these restrictions should be dependent on entirely subjective things like thoughts and feelings. Minimal restrictions on individual behavior such as barring interpersonal violence or stealing property are more than ample for a society to run just fine without devolving into anarchy. I would argue we already have far too many legal restrictions on behavior, and we should be seeking to trim these restrictions away instead of pile more on and strip away what few freedoms we have left.
> That doesn't mean that these restrictions should be dependent on entirely subjective things like thoughts and feelings.
That doesn't necessarily mean that restrictions should be dependent on entirely subjective things.
Subjectivity alone is not sufficient cause to refuse considering whether the benefits of a proposed legal restriction on behavior outweigh the drawbacks. Subjectivity is a drawback, not a deal-breaker, and must be evaluated in full context alongside the benefits of the proposal. Subjectivity is a serious concern, and should never be glossed over or minimized in such evaluations. Subjectivity carries great risk, and should be revisited and reevaluated over time to ensure that the outcomes are considered against the intentions.
> you are held responsible for other people's feelings, and for their feelings as a result of your words and actions, and
It also makes it impossible to distinguish between those whose feelings are truly hurt and those who pretend their feelings got hurt. On social media there is an appealing incentive for this later group to be more vocal and to inflict more harm as there is more audience. It's also a form of trolling: "Wonder if I can pretend to be offended and ban/cancel/pile on so and so. I'd get soooo many likes/retweets/upvotes etc!". We'd like to believe only a tiny fraction of people would engage in the later, but with online visibility and with no way to distinguish the two, the later group I think will start to get larger and larger over time.
This is also a benchmark of totalitarian nightmare. Can I denounce my neighbor and tell the ruling party they made anti-governmental remarks and have their family deported to a labor camp, if I don't like the choice of flowers in their garden? If the answer is "yes" then I may be living a totalitarian nightmare.
We are reacting to a tweet that has very little content, notably how high is the bar for psychological harm. It is undoubtedly higher than making someone feel bad, but the question is: is it high enough?
Consider your words, "you are responsible for your own thoughts, feelings, and actions". For the most part, that is true. On the other hand, we also consider some segments of society as vulnerable. In some of those cases they do not have full control of their thoughts, feelings, or actions. Sometimes it is due to a lack of understanding or experience (e.g. children and youth), sometimes it is due to psychological disorders. The question becomes, who is actually responsible in cases where trolls unintentionally or intentionally exploit that disorder?
The other thing must be considered is the magnitude of the infraction. A competent person may be able to handle a random death threat. The person would have to be considerably more resilient to endure an effectively anonymous person stalking them and threatening them. I would question the ability of anyone to handle that sort of behaviour for an extended period of time unless they have the means to prove the threat is not credible or to protect themselves. There is a reason why some people of means go around with bodyguards, and it isn't solely about their physical protection.
Credible death threats are already illegal and can be handled through both criminal prosecution and civil restraining orders. We don't need any new laws. Sometimes the existing laws aren't enforced effectively, but piling on more laws won't solve that problem.
In a world where we spend increasingly more time online, sociopaths and other bad actors have been handed far too much power/influence and that's net negative for society.
Like it or not, the online world has become a public space--The Public Space. And, now we're talking about metaverses that will further immerse us.
If someone were to follow a person down a public street, screaming obscenities and generally harassing them, of course we'd want the rightful laws on the books against such a thing to be enforced. Why should this be any different in the online world?
The San Francisco Police generally don't do anything to stop deranged homeless drug addicts from following people down the street, screaming obscenities and generally harassing them. SF residents seem to be fine with that state of affairs, or at least it doesn't bother them enough to vote to change it.
And to be clear I don't intend that as a criticism of SF necessarily. The point is that there is no universal worldwide standard of tolerable behavior, and some people are apparently willing to put up with a lot.
Would you be happy if the laws of Saudi Arabia or North Korea were enforced online? They might consider you a sociopath and bad actor.
>The San Francisco Police generally don't do anything to stop deranged homeless...
I don't know that that's true, but I think it's pretty clear that homeless, mentally ill drug addicts are a different problem.
>The point is that there is no universal worldwide standard of tolerable behavior
These arguments always baffle me, as they essentially suggest that nothing means anything and we have no way of determining what a civilized, functioning society should look like. Yet, here we are — with laws and everything.
There's a reasonableness standard applied to these things. We apply it for every scenario where gray areas exist. It's also why we have judges, juries and a court system.
>Would you be happy if the laws of Saudi Arabia or North Korea were enforced online?
I'm missing how the laws of Saudi Arabia or North Korea have anything to do with this case in the UK or a hypothetical one in the US.
The problem is not with trolling per se (there is troll-like behaviour IRL, and we have learned to deal with it appropriately) but with scale and amplification of trolling by that oligopoly of a small handful of social platforms serving millions of locked-in users each with tailored content that their algorithms consider “engaging” for this particular person.
Big Social is in symbiosis with trolls and profits by giving them platform, and I suspect this will remain so for as long as their business model has the advertisers as primary paying customers and main source of revenue.
That said, targeted persistent trolling (I prefer to call it bullying though) is horrible, and I’m sure there are extreme cases where jail may actually be warranted.
> The fundamental problem with it, is it makes society more enmeshed (a pathological relationship dynamic). People start caring more about going with the grain, the mainstream opinion, and rejecting the troublemakers, because they don't want to be cast out too; and they self-censor more.
This is by design.
Before social media, to have your voice heard you needed to get help from either: a billionaire-owned TV Station or Newspaper or the State Sponsored Approved truth Station (in this case, the BBC but CBC and whatever official news network the party maintains in your local dictatorship will do).
Now, all you have to do is simply post it online on a property owned by some billionaire who doesn't really care (as long as it's legal he'll pocket the add revenue) in faraway California. You can guess who's mad about loosing all that control over who gets to be in the news and who doesn't...
I'm not a fan of any law which could be potentially be misused to inhibit free speech, But the context of this law reminded me the row of Elon Musk calling the U.K diver Unsworth who played a major role in rescuing the Thai children struck in underwater cave - a 'Pedo Guy' on Twitter because Unsworth called the submarine supposedly fielded by Elon for the rescue as a P.R. stunt.
Elon did get acquitted in the U.S. court for the defamation suit on this as free speech laws in U.S. has very little riders, But I wonder if this supposed 'pychological harm' law could have delivered a verdict in favor of Unsworth in a U.K. court.
>Unsworth testified that “being branded a pedophile” had made him feel “humiliated, ashamed, dirty”. “I was effectively given a life sentence without parole,” he said. “It hurts to talk about it.”[1]
As a side note, Free speech laws in India has very specific riders when it comes to defamation, which of course are constantly abused[2]. But theoretically, Elon would have definitely been found guilty under that law; Theoretical because he's rich.
maybe we can start with journalists from cnn and fox using social media or members from the ccp using social media to cause a culture way between the two ruling parties in the us
Stopping one from expressing their true feelings in a way is a form of torture. I want to live in a world where I can get to experience the true behavior of people (whether bad or good). Then of course have the possibility to remove them from my life. But I still want to be able to filter them myself!
> A “knowingly false communication” offence will be created that will criminalise those who send or post a message they know to be false with the intention to cause “emotional, psychological, or physical harm to the likely audience”. Government sources gave the example of antivaxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue.
One sinister side: how does one prove something is «know[n] to be untrue»? Whose side has the burden of proof?
The BBC used to nationally broadcast Monty Python doing Nazi satire replete with costumes and salutes. But a few years ago the British government opted to prosecute a man who uploaded to YouTube a satirical video training his Pug to do a Nazi salute.
British tolerance for Swiftian expression seems to be regressing lately.
This isn’t that surprising a development for the UK. You can think of it as a philosophically consistent extension of the UK interpretation of libel.
“In American courts, the burden of proof rests with the person who brings a claim of libel. In British courts, the author or journalist has the burden of proof, and typically loses.”
238 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 255 ms ] threadBack in my day it was just a given people said mean things on the internet.
Isn't this indicative of a serious problem though? If there were places IRL where the average person is subjected to a constant barrage of callousness it wouldn't continue to exist, would it?
Can we have free speech without accountability? In the past accountability seemed like a major factor.
Is this not why the real issue is related to social media itself, rather than generalised "trolling"? This isn't as much of an issue in niche forums or niche-dedicated social sites.
We are free to make our accounts private, block/sign out/delete/not partake in social media, yet many feel like they are __unable__ to make use of these features. IRL, you can't always easily escape bullying. Online, you can choose not to engage; yet people continue to place themselves in the line of fire. I think this speaks to a much deeper issue (as you point out) and I'm not sure jailing trolls is the answer.
I was subject to a harassment campaign at one point, and blocks seemed to just stoke the flame. It eventually subsided when I disengaged from social media entirely for a while, but it felt like I was surrendering to the harassers. They're the ones restricting my speech at that point.
So I get why people refuse to "disengage" – it feels like someone responding to IRL harassment by telling you not to leave your house, it just doesn't seem fair.
Haha, "if"? You must live in a very different world than I do. Junior high school, the old guys running the local hardware store, almost every cubicle farm in the financial services industry, the city of New York... I could give endless of examples where indifference, callousness, or even plain old mean-spiritedness is the prevalent culture.
A person who has not experienced some form of this is not ready for the real world. Humans are wonderful, but also complete bastards and that's something that will never change.
I've worked with people who have been fired for "cubicle farm in the financial services industry" type of behavior, and it's becoming less and less acceptable as time goes on.
In high school a group of boys was expelled for writing homophobic slurs on another student's locker.
I lived in NYC for a period of time, and it's a cake walk compared to spending time on social media. I did feel in danger at one point on the subway, but I was also helped out of that situation by a bystander... and the police were able to ID the individual with security footage (who had a history of causing problems and who I later provided testimony against in court).
With the anonymity of the internet, levers like this are often non-existent. Local police often don't even have the capability to understand it, let alone investigate it. I attempted to report death threats (which contained my home address) at one point and was referred to the FBI (which as far as I know, did nothing).
The mechanisms we have for handling problems like this IRL certainly aren't perfect, many people fall through the cracks, and mechanisms like the police can be very problematic in their own right... but the only time I've felt entirely helpless was when dealing with anonymous online harassment. It became very clear early on that no one was going to do anything about it, and the only way out was to attempt to "not exist" online.
Anecdotally it seems like law enforcement doesn't take online death threats seriously, and are incapable of determining legitimacy and origin. The lack of accountability seems to make it much more likely for death threats to happen online...
I've reported online threats containing my home and work addresses and they're basically shrugged off. If someone approached me in person and said the same thing the outcomes are very different.
Are you suggesting that there are populated places that you can visit in real life where loudly shouting an arbitrary statement could not attract abuse?
If I went to a model train convention, carrying a giant sign explaining how childish and stupid I think model train enthusiasts are, do you think I would be subjected to a "constant barrage of callousness" until I left?
In the UK, "trolling" has been entirely defined (by a media and political class full of blue checks) as any angry response of the public against the wise observations of blue checks. It's entirely class-based. You don't have to threaten, you don't have to swear, you don't have to be ethnically, religiously, or sexually bigoted. You just have to strongly disagree. In fact, the more biting and incisive the comment, the bigger the perceived offense.
Entirely about nobodies embarrassing somebodies in public.
edit: this is a special meaning within the UK media and political classes. Generally, "trolls" are people who like to cause arguments online, and who can be judged by the ratio of the number of characters they type to the number of characters they cause to be typed. "Trolls" are not people who have an honest belief in what they are saying. It's only in the UK (AFAIK) where "troll" is defined by disagreement and exacerbated by tone.
I'm suggesting that if I were in a public place and had a person shouting obscenities at me everywhere I went... it's illegal harassment, and the person can be identified and prosecuted.
I've experienced both IRL and online harassment, and managed to stop IRL harassment through the legal system. I was only able to stop online harassment by hiding.
What does "hiding" mean here? Not posting on twitter?
Is this a law that will regulate bad words and not content? People would have far fewer objections to a blacklist of words you can't use in public.
Is the problem with somebody following you around IRL shouting obscenities at you the content? Is somebody following you around all day shouting positive affirmations not objectionable?
You seem to be hung up on "obscenities" but yes you are correct, it's not just obscenities... there are a lot of varieties of harassment. Following someone around and shouting anything at them is likely harassment IRL, but it seems less clear online when you can't conclusively determine if anonymous accounts are the same person.
Did you not go to school with other children? Name-calling, exclusion, and what adults would call assault and physical abuse are par for the course among small children. Human beings have an instinctive ability to empathize with other people, but consistently applying that to all other people, even when it conflicts with other desires, is not part of our genetic programming, which is why it is a backbone teaching of all major religions. We start as tiny children who reflexively, instinctively hit and call names to express their desires, and we don't grow out of these tendencies so much as reduce them (on the one hand) and refine them.
Habitual bullies discover that they enjoy it when their bullying earns positive attention from other people, and they adjust their targets and tactics accordingly. In a setting where people like seeing sexual minorities persecuted, that's who they will target. In a setting where people like seeing racial minorities persecuted, that's who they will target. If you harbor any aggressive itch you are too timid or too "civilized" to scratch, you can bet the bullies in your social milieu will seek your approval by scratching it for you, and if we're against bullying, that's who it matters to call out, the people who are working for our approval.
Mostly, saying mean things doesn't rise to the level of legal interventions. There are plenty of IRL venues where people will say mean things (sports, comedy clubs, reproductive health clinics), and many venues where saying mean things will get you asked to stop or forced to leave.
If you say mean things on HN, you'll likely be asked to stop or forced to leave; but some sites don't make that part of their platform. Personally, I'm not going to participate in places where there's a lot of meanness, but that means I don't participate in a lot of popular sites.
This is a good point. I don't think a lot of what's commonly said on twitter (or online in general) would fly if said in a physical business... and this disparity seems to embolden a lot of people online to just constantly say shitty things.
But the nature of the internet that potentially connects anyone to everyone else will have such cases, even just by cultural differences.
To believe you can have the same basis in every interpersonal interchange is naive. If that is hard for you, you can trivially easily withdraw from any discussion.
> In the past accountability seemed like a major factor.
The past status quo isn't desirable. You do not have to expose yourself to anything if you do not want to. But many people do not want to get back to that.
I do not like to associate with people that seems to be fond of prosecuting others for trifles. Yet I will make sure they are able to state their opinions.
There's no requirement for you to subject yourself to a troll.
https://archive.md/IPga5
rule of subjectivity is, at the end of the day, rule of the powerful: when two parties disagree and the situation can be defined in primarily subjective terms, the most powerful party wins
by hiding behind outcast, oppressed or unpopular groups with often legitimate (though perhaps subjective, to an extent) grievances, the powerful are able to push through the subjective zeitgeist, which is then used to their advantage
That's not how the game works, we don't collectively do anything, the powerful come up with the definition.
Just wait for a powerful person to take criticism and be able to jail the person because of "psychological harm."
Point being, this is a law that helps the powerful imprison people who criticize them disguised as a way to stop people from hurting other people's feelings. It won't be the sole purpose, I'm sure regular people can get people imprisoned who criticize them as well, but once the law is there, powerful people will use it to stifle criticism.
Is this really a good idea?
It's also has the "I know it when I see it," aura to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
I assumed you were trying to say that since the law would be created "democratically," it was either just or can't be corrupted. In response, I explained how the democratic process works in the US, trying to say that just because we have a democratic process, that doesn't necessarily mean the people we elect to represent us do it in good faith. They represent the corporate interests who funded their war chest first and foremost and the citizenry who elected them incidentally. Democracy as currently in practice is very different from democracy in theory. I love the theory.
Let me try to make a bad analogy. Say you are in a union and it's time to vote for your union rep. There are 4 candidates and they are all mid and high level managers. Yes, they would be democratically elected, but the choice is limited to people who have a serious conflict of interest. It's unlikely you would be represented in good faith. Because of this, any law proposed we should be highly skeptical of as it likely isn't in our best interest but more in the best interest of "management," i.e. corporate interests.
>Are you making a different complaint about the democratic process? That's fine for you to do, but that seems to be unrelated to the topic.
See above.
So collectively, as a single voice, I think our politicians are using this as a way to censor the population and I collectively, as a single voice do not in any way support it. If people don't want to get their feelings hurt, they shouldn't go on Twitter or Facebook or talk to people in any way; otherwise, people probably have to get accustomed to getting their feelings hurt sometimes. It sucks, because nobody likes getting their feelings hurt, but the alternative is way worse.
jails you for trolling
This isn't a hard concept. I don't willingly walk into a mine field, but some people do. I'd totally accompany them if I also had any of the dozens of mine detecting, or detonating tools, vehicles.
You may have a moral obligation to stop people from being hurt, but you have no moral obligation to stop people who willingly choose to be hurt, or accept the risk it.
You are in control of the media you consume online. If you don't like the online community standards, leave and block that community. Or develop the equivalent of mine detection or explosive resistance coping mechanisms for verbal for visual abuse. Before you walk into the communities that permit hostility.
Were they wrong? Yes, as an adult I've found that words can actually be quite hurtful. But usually from people I already know.
Strangers? I don't think strangers can hurt with words, they are strangers after all, unless they get your real identity. I think a lot of the problem people have with "trolling" is actually caused by self-doxing. When one person is anonymous and another person is under their real name, it creates a power imbalance.
Realistically, people can post on the internet from 200-odd jurisdictions, this is not something that the law could or should be preventing.
The words in fact can hurt and always did. Men used to kill each other over who said what. Words can damage reputations and make other kids mistreat the victim too.
It is easier to say the above sentence then to deal with kids verbally abuse others. It is easier to tell the victim to shut up then to teach the victim to defend himself, to undo damage to their self confidence and so on.
Insist that there is a fault with the results of education?!
> that we can solve?
How?
Separate definitions or together. Just give it a shot.
Also: what about boycotts? Is this speech not designed to intimidate an organization into doing the thing or not doing the thing the organizers of the boycott want them to do (or not to do). A lot of speech which is designed to intimidate is perfectly legal because intimidating others is a valid tactic within reason. That’s also subjective, but when you’re in a position of power over someone, you can intimidate the crap out of someone without coming close to say, death threats, rape threats or the threat of doing anything actually illegal.
So like "Eat the rich?" or is it more like "I hope antivaxxers actually get covid"? Does "Fuck you" count?
There can be no standard legal definition, so what you'll get is psychologists and therapists testifying their opinion with the outcome that someone goes to jail.
Psychological harm smells to me a lot like "bite mark analysis" which it took quite a long while for us to undo in the United States. It also put countless people in prison for crimes they didn't commit.
This was far from a universal sentiment because many world governments want no part of a system where the governed can object to the governance. Worse, understanding of the idea, which requires a certain level of specific historical education, has diminished greatly in recent years. Worse still is the active attack on the idea by those that stand to gain from creating yet another power structure.
That's not to say that Twitter, for example, shouldn't moderate it. But woe to us if some committee ("tribunal?") in Congress be given that power.
It is also forbidden to take notes as a member of a jury. If a member is not sure, he should ask again. Which opens the way for rhetoric tricks, not factual information.
So what happens now? If some guys ends up on the receiving end of regret charges, what can they do to defend themselves? Wear body cams to record all intercourse and save as a proof of consent?
== UK
Search for “New NPCC consent form”. Since 2020, seizing texts can only happen with the complainant’s consent, and the form highlights that there should be no repercussion if consent is not given. Therefore, it doesn’t alleviate the main criticism of false accusations: The ability for the accused to prove his innocence.
Link to the consent guidance: https://cdn.prgloo.com/media/download/a9b9b561b88b45c78772fb...
== Other countries
I didn’t immediately find proof (searched Australia, US and Canada) but the general narrative that having her phone searched is a trauma for the victim, and therefore her phone should only be searched with her consent.
Not really, just before jumping to FUD it's good to take a step back and research.
> Search for “New NPCC consent form”. Since 2020, seizing texts can only happen with the complainant’s consent, and the form highlights that there should be no repercussion if consent is not given. Therefore, it doesn’t alleviate the main criticism of false accusations: The ability for the accused to prove his innocence.
Right, so if you're the defendant you can provide your own evidence because its YOUR content. Obviously there should be consent involved if you as the defendant say "go search the complaint's device"
This is not the world we want, but a hopefully temporary workaround.
In which western country is this forbidden, and what is the legal basis for it, do you have more information about this?
https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2016/06/21/taking-notes-boosts-...
All notes have to stay in the court room or deliberation room, this is to protect the privacy of the jury deliberations - jurors are sworn to a lifetime of secrecy over deliberations, and are not allowed to discuss the case outside of court while it is ongoing.
My quick googling shows that it is legal in many places in America [0], and encouraged by some judges.
[0]: https://courts.uslegal.com/jury-system/issues-pertaining-to-...
The CPS uses definitions agreed with the National Police Chiefs' Council to identify racist or religious incidents/crimes and to monitor the decisions and outcomes:
"Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race"
or
"Any incident/crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person's religion or perceived religion."
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/racist-and-religious-h...
No such thing in UK.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/5cdadf7c-3a85-11ec-9bef-a...
Insulate Britain had a number of injunctions taken against them to not block main roads and when they do, they get arrested - 1 of them saying they had been arrested 11 times. Now regardless of whether you agree with them or not, the enforcement of these headline grabbers is terrible.
Once we have enough police enforcing things consistently and as strictly as necessary then I will worry about a dystopia, until then, it's just more attempts to win votes and is just noise.
Statistically I doubt I will be the first.
I think poorly written and inconsistently applied laws is a big part of why the UK has become so selfish. Easier just to worry about me and mine rather than what I think society wants.
It's much deeper than that. The UK's national identity is tied up in things that no longer exist: the British Empire and WW2. That was the peak, and everything since has been a decline.
People have become selfish because the British nation has evaporated. It barely exists. There is no sense of being compatriots, because there is nothing to be compatriots of.
I wouldn't say it's always a bad thing, as many times this does work in the society's favour (e.g. consumer protection laws, various other regulations), and the loosening of the restriction works against it (e.g. the course of events that led to the Grenfell Tower fire).
Of course, you also get stuff like this, the various porn bills that surface every few years, and the Snooper's Charter. This is the real Nanny State stuff.
The UK simply has a different perspective on how government should work. Arguably because it's had a thousand years to figure it out.
It is really weird to watch these countries to mimic CCP controlled China without all the benefits that CCP managed to pull off.
Sad to hear that.
My guess is that they see trouble ahead and want to get a firmer grip on power, so they're trying to get the kid gloves off as stealthily as possible. If they could, they'd go full CCP before you can say "communo-fascism", but they can't, because then they'd have to deal with too much push back at once.
I can criticise my government which citizens in China are prevented from doing. This puts us a long way apart.
They have similar puppets they put on their hands to make the general population think a certain way, they may follow the same single act, but they're not similar.
They've winged and winged about anyone tweeting anything controversial about a perceived 'vulnerable minority' and this has always been the end game. They want people to be punished for causing offense.
I can't believe these morons go around joining groups like antifa, protesting against authoritarianism and yet spend half their energy campaigning for laws that would be an authoritarian governments wet dream.
It's kind of amazing because people in the West live in the most free and non-discriminatory society in all of recorded history. Yes, there are still problems and it's not perfect and these problems require adressing, but try being gay 50 years ago, or in most non-Western countries. We really do have it quite good.
There is kind of a curious parallel with Trump's "Make America Great Again!"-rhetoric where he presents the US as a kind of dystopian hellscape, which is not that dissimilar to how it's presented among some of these people. My take-away from this is that there actually are some deep-rooted problems in the way we organize our society, and that the dissatisfaction, frustration, and anger over this manifests itself in different ways. Brexit is another interesting example, because it always seemed to me not so much about the EU, but more a general dissatisfaction about the state of things.
edit for the flagger:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_child_sex_abuse_ring
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huddersfield_grooming_gang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telford_child_sexual_exploitat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_child_sex_abuse_ring
It goes on like this in dozens more instances.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
p.s. Creating accounts to break the site guidelines will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
[1] https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/839509/Britain-towns-citie...
On the contrary, they quickly side with pearl clutchers that have no problem with broad user surveillance and in some cases even champion laws that selectively punish one or two unsavory people in hope it might be seen as a precedent. Corporations primarily think of their advertisers that dislike any controversy.
I think ultimately we need different platforms for kids and adults. If you have a problem with comments that undeniably sometimes cross several lines, you might need to visit the former. That said, experience says that some people aren't content if there is disapproved content anywhere, but those need to be ignored.
A society where everyone is free
Choose one
(Obviously real life is not so binary, but since freedoms are abused to inflict harm on others, removing the source of harm necessitates removing the freedom that led to it)
It's a sliding a scale. You get to move the marker one way or the other. Whatever you do for the "greater good" will inherently remove rights from someone.
There's no false dichotomy being presented at all.
You cannot both grant people the freedom to act — even if that means they might use that freedom to harm others — and simultaneously, ensure that nobody can come to harm.
Also, the exact definition of "safe" would help in analyzing the original statement.
But I don't think anyone on internet platforms is in dire need of government protection. Perhaps kids that get groomed, but not adults in any capacity that can trivially withdraw from the problem.
Similarly, my freedom to go out on the street and chant "gas the Jews! Gas the Jews!" would restrict the freedom of Jewish people to participate in normal life without fear. And I don't think these fears are ungrounded, or unreasonable, and can be simply dismissed.
Pretty much everyone is in favour of more freedom, across the ideological spectrum. The conflict is the disagreement where the balance lies between "give people the freedom to do what they want" vs. "people using their freedoms to restrict the freedoms of others".
Assange was thrown into jail for basic journalism, but that was at America's behest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meechan
Technically if you're arrested you're thrown in jail (overnight or for a few days).
Cassandra Vera Paz, Spanish, aged 22 during the event, was charged in 2016 with "injury to victims of terrorism", in the context of legislation "against the praising of terrorism", after she posted jokes on twitter - the homicide through explosives of Luis Carrero Blanco, ally to General Franco, by the Basque separatist group ETA, was related to a (NASA like) "space programme". She was condemned in 2017 to spend one year in prison (plus a year of "absolute disqualification" from public offices and aid). The ruling was reversed in 2018 by the Supreme Court, which called the jokes socially and morally reprehensible but not sufficient for penal sanction.
Granddaughter Lucia Carrero Blanco reportedly wrote «I’m scared of a society in which freedom of expression, however regrettable it may be, can lead to jail sentences».
This is part of a very reprehensible and long history of fighting against household terrorism, said history includes things such as torture on innocents or state terrorism.
On top of that, the National Assembly has a bad reputation for pulling this kind of abusive stunts specifically when it's about "praising terrorism" and I don't think I personally know a single person who actually supports this. This is probably why the Supreme Court reversed the decision.
On the other hand I do know many people who tell jokes about Carrero Blanco, or in even worse taste, Irene Villa, a journalist who lost both her legs in another attack with explosives from ETA. Remarkably Irene Villa is on record stating that she enjoys and supports jokes such as "What does Irene Villa do when her friends go and wax her legs? She varnishes hers".
I believe this last bit to be relevant because no doubt that could be considered brutally offensive, literally making fun of a disabled person, but there is nobody offended here, it is, instead, recognized that humor is an important way of coping with a difficult reality, and the history of Basque terrorism is indeed a difficult one.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-58738771
Politics is the US' worst export product, whether it's the unhinged right and their nonsense or the unhinged left and their nonsense. I wish fewer people would pay attention to it.
I was laughing until I realized it's The Times, did a double take, and continued laughing.
It is not the paper it was in terms of reporting, and it's quality is pretty low nowadays.
What are you in for?
Grand theft auto. You?
Bank robbery.
<They look over to the unassuming third man in the the cell>
New guy. What are you in for?
Er, <visible hesitation> I suggested that the UK's new social media harassment law was a satirical publication. Apparently it hurt one of the author's feelings.
<The first two men share a quick glance and then move away from the third one quickly>
- you are held responsible for other people's feelings, and for their feelings as a result of your words and actions, and:
- anything that causes anyone to feel bad, is looked down upon by the collective
Is tyranny by the emotionally stunted.
The fundamental problem with it, is it makes society more enmeshed (a pathological relationship dynamic). People start caring more about going with the grain, the mainstream opinion, and rejecting the troublemakers, because they don't want to be cast out too; and they self-censor more. Humans are beautiful in their diversity, their wildness, and their distrust of authority, and there's been a definite attempt to domesticate people on all fronts (funny, there was a discussion here days ago about domesticated animals having 15-35% smaller brains). Societal cohesion is the Borg, not a utopia. And I just watched Demolition Man yesterday (fantastic movie), this immediately reminds me of the "verbal morality fines" they hand out.
The most fundamental piece of applicable psychology is the idea that you are responsible for your own thoughts, feelings, and actions, period. You are responsible for making yourself happy, for asserting yourself, for setting any boundaries you choose. People on Twitter can just block, or mute, or turn off their DMs for people they don't follow. What's wrong with that? Now there's a human right to use Twitter unhindered? They just spent the last decade telling us there wasn't!
Besides it seems clear we've already swung far too far in the "style over content" direction. People hate on Nassim Taleb because he dares insult lobbyists and people he considers scientific frauds; would he be put in jail if he lived in the UK?
Big Tech is being used to engineer a new kind of society, and I don't like it. It seems Web 3.0 is the only thing able to fight this dynamic.
I'm feeling very harmed after reading your comment. I realize the content's of your message are objectively harmless, but I "feel" harmed. So...off to jail you go.
---
But on a more serious note. Like you said I it's insane that we have come to the point where what you actually say, you intentions, are completely irrelevant, it's all about how your message is perceived. What are the guardrails here?
Harmful effect can be anything. I could plagiarize the top ShowHN post from yesterday, post it here and get called out. Then try to get all the commenters prosecuted because my feelings were hurt? Is this seriously how this law works?
Hell an even more extreme example could be "hey it's really nice and sunny outside today", and someone will comment "I identify as darkness, this is hurtful to my people". Am I headed to the slammer for saying that the weather was nice?
The way this is typically framed is "impact matters more than intent". Like if you weren't watching where you were walking and accidentally stepped on someone's foot. You didn't _intend_ to harm them, but the overall _impact_ was that you did harm them.
As you rightly point out though, the elephant in the room is that impact in this context is not falsifiable. Unlike stepping on someone's foot where you could use instruments to measure how many capillaries were broken or if the bone is cracked, with words and feelings you can't actually empirically prove harm was done which is why I think enacting laws and policies that directly correlate with impact is a recipe for disaster...
IMO the best way to deal with impact has to be at the cultural level. "Hey, I find swear words offensive, can you stop?" "Oh sure, sorry about that, I won't swear around you". Bam, problem solved.
A society that transitions to: "Hey, I find swear words offensive, I'm going to report you to the psychological harm police" is one on the fast track to dystopia.
Do you feel that user "clairity" harmed you? If so I will begin the paperwork for detainment and evaluation for reeducation by the Internet Feelings Agency (IFA).
as always, we have to consider the nuance and avoid overly broad statements/policies.
IMO the only reasonable way to deal with impact is to limit the law to purely physical impact. It should never be the business of any government to attempt to regulate, mandate, restrict or punish behavior based on the thought processes or feelings of anyone.
This solution does not account for the following ways a troll can harass you:
* sockpuppets pinging you,
* sockpuppets impersonating you,
* sockpuppets mass reporting you, thereby suspending your accounts
* finding people you are friends/family with and sending them rape/death/bomb threats or doing the above,
* finding where you work and sending your workplace similar threats,
* putting up websites involving your legal name and face to make allegations you're a child predator/criminal optimized for search engines.
You should try telling this to those who get abused online. I think people who regularly get rape threats and racial abuse, many of whom are calling for such legislation ( recently there have been numerous cases with black footballers and also some with female journalists), have a slightly higher priority than people who just want to insult freely without fear of consequences. Considering people have committed suicide over online harassment, it's not as simple as "just block the baddies".
“<Foobar> is a poopyhead”, even if it provokes an outsized negative reaction on Foobar’s part, is nowhere near the same thing.
The solution is to crack down hard on the real harm, based on the many laws we already have on the books.
I feel like you mean the best in your heart, but would encourage anyone to think deeply before white knighting for minorities. A lot of times well meaning laws can have disastrous consequences in smothering less-powerful voices (laws against "immoral" content referring to anything sexual online regularly making things worse for actual sex workers, for instance). The ACLU has a long list of historical incidences where "legal" censorship ended up hurting civil rights activists, queer activists and creatives, and too many other groups to name.
Absolutely, especially in clown shitfests like the UK. That doesn't mean people who enjoy racially abusing teenagers on Twitter should just be left to do so. There's a middle ground between banning anything anyone might deem "offensive" (like erotica or BDSM) and the wild west.
They don't have higher priority than the rest of society, which enjoy an important lack of authoritarianism in this regard. It's not about wanting to insult freely, but about the right to offend.
I don't know why you think your freedom to offend/insult is higher than another person's freedom to not be offended/insulted.
Perhaps I claim to be genuinely offended/insulted by speech in the form of a haiku. You can’t prove that my claimed offense/insult is not genuine, yet it would be ridiculous to ban such speech or prosecute it.
I think there is therefore a necessary middle ground of speech which is legal but for which someone claims it offends them. If it offends some people, see xkcd 1357.
https://xkcd.com/1357/
Many people seem to feel otherwise, and there are laws in place in various regions as a result. Are they wrong to choose to restrict your speech in favor of the collective good? If not, then what is the dividing line between "verbal abuse is okay" and "verbal abuse is not okay"? If it merely drives them to self-harm rather than suicide, is that morally acceptable, in some way that causing suicide is not?
Societies have a long-standing tradition of restricting individual behaviors for the collective good. Wishing that societies wouldn't this is hopeless, because it seems like every society that doesn't restrict individual behaviors to some degree ends up becoming a textbook example of how not run a society.
I read your moral position here as "if you are too frail to resist someone's words, you don't deserve protection from their verbal abuse with malicious intent". If I have misunderstood how your moral reasoning applies to the topic under discussion — trolls willfully causing psychological harm on the Internet — please help me understand where I've misapplied your logic.
Did you intend to pressure them to do that? If you acted with that INTENT, and external evidence proves it, then NO, by OP's logic, that abuse is the perpetrator's problem.
>Societies have a long-standing tradition of restricting individual behaviors for the collective good.
In the UK? Come off it.
I’m not the original parent, but I read (and share) the position as:
Barring intent by the speaker to inflict direct and immediate physical harm, if you are too frail to maintain your mental health in the face of someone else’s speech (or you pretend to be), then you are not served — and neither is justice, fairness, or truth — by the state applying its monopoly on violence to forcibly silence others at your behest.
Instead, each individual is personally responsible for their own mental well-being, while the state’s responsibility extends no further than offering services and support to help enable your own individual resiliency.
“Psychological harm” is something else entirely.
Your position presupposes the guilt and innocence of both parties.
The individual claiming “psychological harm” can just as easily be the perpetrator, and psychological harm will be inflicted on the victim by the state when they’re arrested for upsetting someone with narcissistic personality disorder.
It seems unlikely that a UK court would reach such a judgment in favor of the perpetrator, as opposed to simply jailing them.
I thought tru-crime was just science fiction and yet we have multiple individuals actually supporting a dystopian future where that's a real thing.
They do not place judgement on intention alone. There's a clear difference.
This all demonstrates that judges and juries are familiar with evaluating intentions and criminality within the frameworks of law provided. A framework of law may declare certain speech as unlawful (such as obscenity or slander) may declare intentions a key factor in criminality, and the systems of law that judge the legality and criminality of that speech are already in place in the UK (and US) to support laws that criminalize speech with malicious intent.
Things like slander and libel require clear demonstration that you've been damaged monetarily etc.
I don't see how you can clearly show damages from a person deciding to commit suicide or feeling bad because of trolls. Prove it.
Regardless, at the end of the day I don't really care whether there's a legal framework in place. I don't agree that it's helpful to society at all and I'm going to err on the side that almost no speech harmful to anyone and should NEVER result in imprisonment. There's almost no road where criminalizing trolls on the internet leads to a better society or helps mentally ill people.
The original article does a credible job of explaining why a new law may be passed. You may agree or disagree, or you may require more information than is yet available, but that's for you to determine on your own.
You are mistaking morality with legality. Morally its wrong, legally it shouldn't be.
>I read your moral position here as "if you are too frail to resist someone's words, you don't deserve protection from their verbal abuse with malicious intent".
Again, mistaking morality with legality. I'm not the OP, but that's my legal position, though it's not my moral position.
>Societies have a long-standing tradition of restricting individual behaviors for the collective good. Wishing that societies wouldn't this is hopeless, because it seems like every society that doesn't restrict individual behaviors to some degree ends up becoming a textbook example of how not run a society.
All coherent societies restrict individual behavior for the collective good. That doesn't mean that these restrictions should be dependent on entirely subjective things like thoughts and feelings. Minimal restrictions on individual behavior such as barring interpersonal violence or stealing property are more than ample for a society to run just fine without devolving into anarchy. I would argue we already have far too many legal restrictions on behavior, and we should be seeking to trim these restrictions away instead of pile more on and strip away what few freedoms we have left.
That doesn't necessarily mean that restrictions should be dependent on entirely subjective things.
Subjectivity alone is not sufficient cause to refuse considering whether the benefits of a proposed legal restriction on behavior outweigh the drawbacks. Subjectivity is a drawback, not a deal-breaker, and must be evaluated in full context alongside the benefits of the proposal. Subjectivity is a serious concern, and should never be glossed over or minimized in such evaluations. Subjectivity carries great risk, and should be revisited and reevaluated over time to ensure that the outcomes are considered against the intentions.
It also makes it impossible to distinguish between those whose feelings are truly hurt and those who pretend their feelings got hurt. On social media there is an appealing incentive for this later group to be more vocal and to inflict more harm as there is more audience. It's also a form of trolling: "Wonder if I can pretend to be offended and ban/cancel/pile on so and so. I'd get soooo many likes/retweets/upvotes etc!". We'd like to believe only a tiny fraction of people would engage in the later, but with online visibility and with no way to distinguish the two, the later group I think will start to get larger and larger over time.
This is also a benchmark of totalitarian nightmare. Can I denounce my neighbor and tell the ruling party they made anti-governmental remarks and have their family deported to a labor camp, if I don't like the choice of flowers in their garden? If the answer is "yes" then I may be living a totalitarian nightmare.
Consider your words, "you are responsible for your own thoughts, feelings, and actions". For the most part, that is true. On the other hand, we also consider some segments of society as vulnerable. In some of those cases they do not have full control of their thoughts, feelings, or actions. Sometimes it is due to a lack of understanding or experience (e.g. children and youth), sometimes it is due to psychological disorders. The question becomes, who is actually responsible in cases where trolls unintentionally or intentionally exploit that disorder?
The other thing must be considered is the magnitude of the infraction. A competent person may be able to handle a random death threat. The person would have to be considerably more resilient to endure an effectively anonymous person stalking them and threatening them. I would question the ability of anyone to handle that sort of behaviour for an extended period of time unless they have the means to prove the threat is not credible or to protect themselves. There is a reason why some people of means go around with bodyguards, and it isn't solely about their physical protection.
In a world where we spend increasingly more time online, sociopaths and other bad actors have been handed far too much power/influence and that's net negative for society.
Like it or not, the online world has become a public space--The Public Space. And, now we're talking about metaverses that will further immerse us.
If someone were to follow a person down a public street, screaming obscenities and generally harassing them, of course we'd want the rightful laws on the books against such a thing to be enforced. Why should this be any different in the online world?
Why would you assume that the sociopaths and bad actors wouldn’t be the ones exploiting laws like this to do great harm to those they disagree with?
And to be clear I don't intend that as a criticism of SF necessarily. The point is that there is no universal worldwide standard of tolerable behavior, and some people are apparently willing to put up with a lot.
Would you be happy if the laws of Saudi Arabia or North Korea were enforced online? They might consider you a sociopath and bad actor.
I don't know that that's true, but I think it's pretty clear that homeless, mentally ill drug addicts are a different problem.
>The point is that there is no universal worldwide standard of tolerable behavior
These arguments always baffle me, as they essentially suggest that nothing means anything and we have no way of determining what a civilized, functioning society should look like. Yet, here we are — with laws and everything.
There's a reasonableness standard applied to these things. We apply it for every scenario where gray areas exist. It's also why we have judges, juries and a court system.
>Would you be happy if the laws of Saudi Arabia or North Korea were enforced online?
I'm missing how the laws of Saudi Arabia or North Korea have anything to do with this case in the UK or a hypothetical one in the US.
Big Social is in symbiosis with trolls and profits by giving them platform, and I suspect this will remain so for as long as their business model has the advertisers as primary paying customers and main source of revenue.
That said, targeted persistent trolling (I prefer to call it bullying though) is horrible, and I’m sure there are extreme cases where jail may actually be warranted.
This is by design.
Before social media, to have your voice heard you needed to get help from either: a billionaire-owned TV Station or Newspaper or the State Sponsored Approved truth Station (in this case, the BBC but CBC and whatever official news network the party maintains in your local dictatorship will do).
Now, all you have to do is simply post it online on a property owned by some billionaire who doesn't really care (as long as it's legal he'll pocket the add revenue) in faraway California. You can guess who's mad about loosing all that control over who gets to be in the news and who doesn't...
Elon did get acquitted in the U.S. court for the defamation suit on this as free speech laws in U.S. has very little riders, But I wonder if this supposed 'pychological harm' law could have delivered a verdict in favor of Unsworth in a U.K. court.
>Unsworth testified that “being branded a pedophile” had made him feel “humiliated, ashamed, dirty”. “I was effectively given a life sentence without parole,” he said. “It hurts to talk about it.”[1]
As a side note, Free speech laws in India has very specific riders when it comes to defamation, which of course are constantly abused[2]. But theoretically, Elon would have definitely been found guilty under that law; Theoretical because he's rich.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/06/elon-musk...
[2] https://blog.ipleaders.in/right-to-freedom-of-speech/
People need to read 1984 and Gulag Archipelago.
> A “knowingly false communication” offence will be created that will criminalise those who send or post a message they know to be false with the intention to cause “emotional, psychological, or physical harm to the likely audience”. Government sources gave the example of antivaxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue.
One sinister side: how does one prove something is «know[n] to be untrue»? Whose side has the burden of proof?
The law is not self-executing. That's why we have judges and trials.
I have to find my way back to reality.
British tolerance for Swiftian expression seems to be regressing lately.
This isn’t that surprising a development for the UK. You can think of it as a philosophically consistent extension of the UK interpretation of libel.
“In American courts, the burden of proof rests with the person who brings a claim of libel. In British courts, the author or journalist has the burden of proof, and typically loses.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/03/21/394273902/...