How Thai authorities use online doxxing to suppress dissent

Absurd and not at all surprising today. And large sections of many populations do not care because their ideology aligns with whoever is doing the abuse of basic freedoms.

Exactly. In New Zealand I got a visit from the police because of something I said on social media. It wasn't an offence, it just made them suspicious so they questioned me then went away. But some western countries are even worse and do imprison people for quite long sentences (sometime years) for saying politically wrong ideas on social media - UK is most notorious for this but it's well supported by the population who mostly just wants to punish anyone who disagrees with their politics.

This is so fucked up. Can't wait for them to knock because of some misunderstood inside joke. If anyone reads my private messages, straight to jail for profanity.

Can you provide an example of a single case where the UK has imprisoned people for political expression on social media?

As far as I can tell this is just far-right propaganda to disguise what actually happened -- which is the UK imprisoning people for conspiracies to burn down hotels with immigrants in them; or participating in on-going violent riots by calling for various buildings to be attacked or people to be murdered.

This speech isnt covered by free expression, and is a crime in all countries, including the US.

I’m guessing this[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_joke_trial

Well - what it was, that you have said? You fully know it changes things.

Good job confirming his point.

The cops visited me in Minecraft last month.

They said to be careful, because if I die in Minecraft, I die in REAL LIFE!

https://m.xkcd.com/180/

There are a couple of cases like this, including one about some racist remarks in liverpool -- both were overturned on appeal.

> Chambers appealed against the Crown Court decision to the High Court, which would ultimately quash the conviction.

These are absolutely trivial cases to assume that somehow the UK has suspended the free expression rights of its citizens. These amount to over-reach by the lowest courts (staffed by volunteer judges, fyi) which were corrected. That's about as good as justice is in practice.

(It's also an unaddressed issue on exactly what social media is -- people tend to assume its some private conversation, but its at least as plausible to treat it as a acts of publishing to a public environment. When those actions constitue attacks on people, the UK/Europe have typically regarded public attacks as having fewer free expression protections).

Neverthless, these cases are used by the far right online to disguise what has been action taken by the UK gov against far right quasi-terrorist groups engaged in mass violence. The UK gov is not persecuting people for free expression, they have taken action against people using social media to organise murder.

One should be careful to note where this perception of UK speech laws is coming from. It's not free speech classical liberals.

There have always been limits to free speech. Free speech has never meant you can incite violence, for example. You cannot order your goons to kill someone and then defend yourself on the basis of free speech.

This framing of yours is entirely disingenuous.

This subject is always framed by people like yourself as being all about the far-right racists and somewhat recent riots, when it has been going on a lot longer than that.

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

Are you really going to defend the conviction of a teenage girl quoting Snoop Dogg lyrics on facebook?

While the punishments were light typically (usually fines). Many of these cases can end up with time in prison.

Then there is the communications act:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_2003#Malici...

Man was prosecuted because he sent a drunk tweet:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/bad-tweet-uk-sir-tom-...

You are defending these these awful laws. There a plenty of cases that I've forgotten about because quite frankly there are so many.

> One should be careful to note where this perception of UK speech laws is coming from. It's not free speech classical liberals.

This is disingenuous. Firstly, it doesn't matter who the criticism is coming from if it is valid (which it is). Secondly you can see there are plenty of well know public figures that aren't far right that have criticised the current laws in the link to the selected cases, these include MPs, Comedians and Well known authors.

e.g.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c51j64lk2l8o

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/yorkshire-mp-philip-da...

It's also ignoring that the entire process of being charged with a crime is punishment itself - even if never convicted, even if overturned on appeal.

If you've never been involved in court proceedings it will come as a surprise.

> Are you really going to defend the conviction of a teenage girl quoting Snoop Dogg lyrics on facebook?

Can you link me to the evidence you have for this person having been convicted? Because she wasnt, the case was immediately over turned on appeal and the lower court volunteer judge basically reprimanded.

Do you have any evidence for any of these things you believe? Have you looked into any of them? Who told you about them? How do you know about a teenager in liverpool that upset a police officer? Why is that something you know about? Do you not find that odd? Isn't it strange that you "know" she was "convicted" but have no actual idea what happened?

Just reflect a moment on what the major actions of the UK gov. involving social media have been over the last year, and which of those have resulted in actual convinctions. HINT: ones involving plots to murder people by the far right.

Hmm... who exactly has been talking about all these "free speech" cases? Coincidence?

OK, so reflecting on the world at the moment. Do you want the police to suspend investigating all complaints involving social media, or to continue to investigate them?

If you choose the first one, then you're preventing the investigation of mass riots, conspiracy to murder, mass disruption of public infrastructure -- and so on. All which have happened in the last 9mo, and gone through the courts. BUT you do have the advantage that police wont, once in a blue moon, turn up to someone's house and investigae them for a bit of nonesense that disappears within a day or at most a month when a real judge has looked at the case.

If you choose two, then you can still offer guidance to local police forces to be more careful in assessing complaints -- guidance which has almost certainly been given, since the gov arent happy theyre being distracted with this BS.

Now ask yourself: who at the moment really wants option number 1?

> Can you link me to the evidence you have for this person having been convicted? Because she wasnt, the case was immediately over turned on appeal and the lower court volunteer judge basically reprimanded.

I am aware of this and I deliberately used this as bait, quite predictably you defended what took place.

You must have missed the bit where the police literally go looking for offensive words on social media. They literally have software that flags up speech.

It matters not that later on it was "corrected". The reason it was "corrected" I suspect was because of the amount of pressure put on politicians after it was featured in the media.

* There should not be entire police departments dedicated to prosecuting things said on social media.

* There should not be software that flags up the fact that you said naughty words.

* This should not have never even got to court in the first place.

> Just reflect a moment on what the major actions of the UK gov. involving social media have been over the last year, and which of those have resulted in actual convinctions. HINT: ones involving plots to murder people by the far right.

Argh yes the terrifying "far right".

The fact is that the government point at scary people like the Islamic Extremists (I am old enough to remember that), the neo-nazis, homo-phobes and other generally nasty people to sell these awful laws and then they are (mis)used against normal people.

> Hmm... who exactly has been talking about all these "free speech" cases? Coincidence?

Why does it matter? If Adolf Hitler/Francisco Franco/Mussolini/Stalin/<insert despot> rose from the dead tomorrow and was making valid criticisms of the various laws in the UK that stifle speech that doesn't mean that they are incorrect about those facts. It would make them hypocrites, but not incorrect.

Yep. I didn't want to get into all of that because it would have made the post even longer tbh.

> OK, so reflecting on the world at the moment. Do you want the police to suspend investigating all complaints involving social media, or to continue to investigate them?

Yes. I do. I want them to put resources into catch the criminals in my area that have been stealing motor vehicles instead as that actually affect me and my community. Not policing social media.

The criminals in your area are probably plotting those thefts on whatsapp.

I dont know what century you think this is, if you're sincere about catching criminals you would want even more intrusion into online spaces.

Why is everyone assuming the police should be policing pre-crime?

No one's talking about pre-crime. I'm talking about crime.

It's a crime to conspire to murder; to commit fraud; to arrange an act of terrorism; and so on. And in all relevant cases, social media was used in court after-the-fact just as evidence.

So we're talking about activity on social media which are crimes themselves, just being used as evidence after other crimes have been committed.

This is the problem with the propaganda being put out there at the moment, none of it is true -- and all of it is in the service of disgusing the content of actual court cases.

People on the far-right like to use the phrase "posting to social media" when they mean "using online communication platforms to arrange a violent riot with the intent to murder people". And they like to pretend this evidence collection is happening before those actions -- when its after, and presented in court.

They could you know arrest the person and search the phone under suspicion, or get a court order. They don't need mass surveillance. Maybe they should do their job and actually investigate it, which they don't do.

You can always justify more infringements on personal liberties under the guise of stopping crime, protecting the children, stopping the terrorists. That doesn't mean we should.

What we shouldn't be doing is using resources to find people saying naughty words on facebook (which is literally what they do).

This was literally posted here like last week, I suggest you read it:

https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/04/11/encryption...

Is the "far right" in the room now with you now? When have you dealt with any of the "far right". How do you know they really exist? Most of the people I've encountered on the far right have been losers that literally live with their mother or edgy teenagers trolling people online.

It is you my friend that has been propagandised. They always point at a scary person and then say that they need to take away your rights and your privacy.

> It's a crime to conspire to murder; to commit fraud; to arrange an act of terrorism; and so on. And in all relevant cases, social media was used in court after-the-fact just as evidence.

Why should I lose privacy and my ability to speak freely because someone else committed an unrelated crime?

Why does this require mass surveillance, when they can get a warrant to search their electronic devices?

The answer is I shouldn't.

> So we're talking about activity on social media which are crimes themselves, just being used as evidence after other crimes have been committed.

Some of this activity that are crimes is making edgy comments on twitter while drunk and then deleting it the next day. That is illegal under the communications act of 2003.

The far right have just recently put ~130 unknowns into black vans, on to plans, to be sold into slavery in an elsavadorian prison. Of the two we have information on, both are legal residents of their own country. Of the rest, all we know is that they are innocent before the law, since theyve had no trial.

The oligarch who presently threatens the legislature of the largest democracy in the world with being having their opponents funded at the primary stage -- is also the same person who has had 100,000s of legal employees of the government fired and who has prompted these stories about the UK on the world's most imporatnt political media platform, that he owns. He did so after riots took place in the UK whose aim was to murder immigrants who had been falsely accused of crimes, these accusations also spread by the very same oligarch.

There's a line from the person trying to burn down a hotel with immigrants inside, in the UK, to social media, to the enslavement of unknown persons in the US. That line we call "the far right" and it's a pretty small group, at the top.

I cannot really grasp how a person would be confused by who the far right are and at the same time have at their fingertips news stories about girls in liverpool. One has to imagine you aren't really being serious.

This is exhausting. Now you are bringing up US politics. We are talking about the UK and the UK law.

I have linked you the communications act of 2003, I have linked you examples of cases where people have be prosecuted for speech and you are going on about the current Administration in the United States which is on the other-side of an ocean.

I am asking you when have you met someone in real life that is "far right"? You are unlikely to have done so because there is maybe a few thousand at most in a country of 80 million people.

I have seen the leaked membership details of the BNP. Do you know how many people were in the BNP? IIRC it was less than 500 people for the entire UK.

You are talking as if there are Brown Shirts marching up every UK high street.

Nit: is this political? Looks like the issue with the "joke" was violence/terrorism. A political statement would be like

> David Cameron is a twit

Not

> I'm going to blow up the airport

Can't imagine why this person got jail time for that given that it was just idiocy, but still

I was born in Thailand--though to be clear, I am not Thai. Thais are not Westerners. They revere their king. Their "ideology" doesn't embrace western "freedoms" of speech and protest to begin with. So the implied accusation of hypocrisy in your comment is simply misplaced.

Westerners generally, and Americans specifically, don't realize how their constant harping on "basic freedoms" comes across as ethnocentric. My parents are American citizens, but they were raised in Bangladesh and they don't really believe in free speech or democracy. My dad always talks about free speech with implicit scare quotes, like he’s referring to an american custom.

<< imprison people for quite long sentences (sometime years) for saying politically wrong ideas

It is weird even on a pragmatic basis. I accept as a concept that it may have been effective when we were a little less connected, but these days it seems like it is actively asking for a wrong kind of reaction from the population. Not to mention, the people you imprison for typing the wrong stuff online are likely now going to be way more radicalized than when they went there. Honestly, I just do not get that approach.

The UK goes far beyond that. Merely voicing political dissent to mass immigration can get you harassed by the police if you dare to say that immigrants shouldn't be admitted if they don't speak the language or have very different values. That isn't "inciting violence" except through very tortured round-about logic which could just as well classify any political dissent as inciting violence by way of tacitly, implicitly, not actually advocating for a violent revolt. They call it "hate speech" but what it really means is that expression of some political opinions is outlawed. This makes a farce of democracy.

Why do your parents believe this?

>are likely now going to be way more radicalized than

The problem here is you're not thinking like a state and you think this is a bad thing.

When you have some radicals out there causing problems that's an excuse for you to spend billion making your military industrial complex buddies rich. It gives you an excuse to crack down and take out anyone you like because they "are the radical enemy that's dangerous". And Western governments and companies will gladly sell you weapons and technology to monitor and blow up anyone under your rule that you want.

>Merely voicing political dissent to mass immigration can get you harassed by the police if you dare to say that immigrants shouldn't be admitted if they don't speak the language or have very different values.

Can you an example of a person who was convicted and exactly what they said?

And when a Mao or a Pol Pot comes along, he will find a defenseless culture ripe for the taking.

> Thais are not Westerners. They revere their king

They revere Bhumibol, not his philandering, mercurial, and ripped son Vajiralongkorn who is de facto in exile in Germany. Everything in Thailand is de facto run by the military junta and aligned oligarchs like the Chearavanont and Shinawatra families.

And the younger generation (Gen Z) doesn't have much affinity for Bhumibol either, because they grew up in the midst of a middle income trap - their lives are better than their neighbors in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam, but CoL and the employment market is hellish, oligarchy and relations matter so if you didn't attend the right schools you're screwed, and abuses of power like the RedBull Heir running over a cop and all the extravagance around the royal family and their extended retinue grew more unpopular.

Tbf, I assume your frame of reference was the 1990s, and until the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 Thailand went through a massive economic boom so satisfaction with Bhumibol was high. Bhumibol also at least tried to appear like he cared about normal Thai people.

It's not their cultural inheritance. Their moms never pulled them aside as children and said something like "you don't have to like what Bobby said to you, it's a free country and he can speak his mind." Quite the opposite: as in most Asian societies, there is an overarching emphasis on social harmony, face saving, etc.

As to democracy, that is both culturally alien to them and their experience with it has been one of failure. We have never had a stable democratic government in Bangladesh, and my parents are persuaded that it's not possible. In general, they view democracy experiments outside Europe as something of a cruel joke. My parents felt quite vindicated that democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan failed, because they expected that to happen.

My parents lived there in the 1980s and we visited regularly in the 1990s, so yes, our perception is anchored in what was generally an optimistic time for the country. It's been sad to see what's happened recently. Thais are incredible people and don't understand why they can't seem to keep a functioning civil government lately. Maybe middle income trap is the explanation.

Free speech is not an American thing, it's a human thing. The fact that some governments do not recognize it does not make it any less of a right.

Rights are not given to you by your government, your rights are your rights by virtue of you being a human being.

Thinking freedom of speech is even remotely ethnocentric just proves that something is broken in that person's head that they don't even understand the basic concept.

It is possible I mistunderstood GP, but I thought he mentioned UK, which is the embodiment of western government and, historically speaking, some of its source. It is possible things will degrade further, but it is admittedly difficult for me to accept the same level of learned helplessness in UK when compared to.. say.. Syria.

edit: added which; when compared to

> Thais are incredible people and don't understand why they can't seem to keep a functioning civil government lately. Maybe middle income trap is the explanation

Imo, it's the other way around. Thailand wasn't able to build strong institutions as that would have meant devolving power from the Military, Monarchy, and Crony Capitalists. This meant that economic reforms that would have helped Thailand recover from 1997 were not enacted as they would have undermined a lot of well connected and powerful people.

South Korea was roughly comparable to Thailand in the 1990s (and one of my professors who worked on Korean democratization confirmed this back in the day), but the IMF and US forced Korea to enact harsh reforms that helped them recover by the 2000s and become a developed country.

Also, a number of Thai business families were ethnic Chinese with ancestry in Guangdong, so a number of those families like the Chearavanonts decided to invest in China (the first privately owned companies in China were all Chearavanont funded because they had familial relations with the post-Mao leadership in Guangdong) [0] instead of in domestic R&D, while Korean chaebols didn't have a similar option and preemptively began investing in R&D in the 1990s.

[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/14/business/from-chickens-to...

> Quite the opposite: as in most Asian societies, there is an overarching emphasis on social harmony, face saving, etc.

to be fair, it's not actually different. in both cases, the more powerful person gets to say what they want and everybody else has to agree or remain quiet.

in America, you can get targeted by the state for peaceful protests or posting something on social media in the past because you're a "homegrown terrorist". in Thailand, as described here, you can get arrested for peaceful protest or something you posted in the past.

freedom has always meant freedom of the rich and powerful.

> Rights are not given to you by your government, your rights are your rights by virtue of you being a human being.

In theory, yes. In practice, see palestinian protests in western world and others (phone searches at borders, mass surveillance etc.)

You’re just trying to launder your cultural beliefs through fancy language. Westerners developed the concept of “rights” as God-given guarantees that were beyond the power of governments to strip away. But of course Thais don’t share your God. And now most westerners don’t believe in the God that was originally invoked as the premise for those rights.

So where do these universal “rights” come from? Do they reflect some fact of human biology? Of course they do not.

No, it is different, at least in degree if not at the extremes. My wife is an American and the directness and bluntness with which she and her family talk to each other still shocks me after 15 years of knowing them. Even if there are practical limits to American free speech, it’s apparent from simple inspection that there’s a distinctive cultural basis for this political right.

Why? They were both dictators and both responsible for the deaths of millions, is the scale or exact ideology particularly relevant?

Is your argument really that as long as the conviction is eventually overturned, no harm no foul it's just a "trivial case" so everyone should just pretend it never happened? Really?

I'd like to hear more about the point you're making in that second sentence. Can you elaborate?

The fact that you think there needs to be a criminal conviction in court makes me think you haven't the slightest idea what free speech means ideologically.

If police question you based on your speech alone, that itself is a violation. You should not have to answer to the state for voicing disagreement or for having an unpopular opinion.

Here's an example of half a dozen police officers coming to talk to parents for complaining about their school in a private WhatsApp group: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/29/parents-arre... (they were later arrested)

Here's a police officer saying on video that if you tell someone to speak English it "could be perceived as a hate crime:" https://x.com/PeterSweden7/status/1911348268346323047

This was a partially deaf person asking the person they were talking to to please speak clearly (no mention of language was made, not that it should matter). The only appropriate response to a police officer coming up to you to discuss the interaction is profanity.

Here's multiple arrests for protests after the death of the Queen: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62883713

These are ones I found with a Google search in under ten minutes. I'm sure there are dozens, hundreds more - one link I didn't open said there have been approximately 3,000 arrests based on social media posts. I'm sure some of those are justified, I'm sure a lot of them aren't.

A conviction does not need to happen for damage to be done or for speech to be chilled.

I'm not trying to launder anything, I think it's pretty obvious that Western culture in general is superior to others. Case in point: the linked article here. No laundering necessary. But even if you disagree with that, there's nothing preventing anyone from acknowledging my actual point, as well as the fact that belief in inalienable human rights does not by definition require any particular religion or belief in any particular God or gods. It simply requires acknowledgement that all humans are worthy of those rights.

I would note the reverence isn’t as strong today as it was under the prior king. Most homes you’ll still find king Rama ix hung on the wall and I rarely see the current king. Indeed it’s a bit of a surprise when I do and it makes me wonder about their associations.

Thai people generally love the idea of democracy. But they’ve been under so many dictators for so long they’ve become jaded. Every Thai person has a strong political view more or less and people absolutely criticize the government, military, and even gossip about the royal family extensively - behind closed doors and with friends. Graft is rampant though, and the powerful with big last names can literally do anything they want and get away with it, the police don’t serve the people, and the individual is generally disenfranchised.

There however have been and continue to be powerful democracy movements and political dissent - see the yellow shirt / red shirt riots, the democracy protests and mass killings by the military over the last 60 years, add in it the king Rama the ix personally advocating against the power of the government over its people and the importance of basic human rights.

I’d note that human rights isn’t an American concept but a basis in liberal humanism, which has been a conceptual framework evolved over thousands of years. Most my experience talking to people about liberal humanism and the status quo in South and Southeast Asia is “yes of course it’s self evident, but” where the but is effectively a powerlessness over the social structure of society. I’d note further that Theravada Buddhism is at its core liberal humanist as well, which is specifically relevant in Thailand. This is why ultimately with the Thai people the liberal humanist movement is quite popular and there continues to be considerable internal political problems - because the eightfold path dictates a liberal humanist philosophy and the people in power prefer the prior slavery based society before Chulalongkorn.

It's trivial with respect to the question of whether political free expression in the UK is somehow under threat, yes. A handful of weird cases of extremely mild police overreach, corrected by a court -- hardly add up to anything. Every legal system in the world has such cases, in almost every other, they are much more extreme. In the UK, no one is paying for legal cases they win, unlike in the US where "free speech" is obtainable only if you can pay for your defence.

I mean in the UK we aren't used to using the court system to obtain our rights, but this is basically the american system. It's extraordinary to hear americans express concern that a handful of people in the UK had to use the standard court procedure to have their rights enforced, which they did.

Would the UK be better if these cases did not happen? Sure. But there's no legal system, almost by definition, that isnt going to have these cases. That's what courts exist to do -- to prevent executive overreach.

The question is why are a handful of people, whose rights were enforced by the courts, being used as political agitprop against the UK? The answer is pretty obvious. It's a deliberate project of the far right to create popular resentement towards democractic governments in the west, at the time these governemnts are arresting rioters for attempting to murder immigrants.

This isnt hard to see. These stories are spread by a very narrow range of extremely famous propagandists with a very obvious agenda.

None of them mention that these cases were all thrown out on appeal. Nor that there's a tiny number of them. Nor that all the ones that result in conviction are basically domestic terrorism

I think GenZ still deeply reveres him but he was so old at that point that he had little day to day impact on their lives like he did the prior generations. Most Thai people of any generation would have given their life to him in a heartbeat. But as he disappeared from day to day politics as his health failed his best he could do was simply not abdicate and try to not die for as long as possible.

The son however - I’ve rarely seen his picture hung in homes or shops - just his father.

The truth though is Thailand has been run by big last name power as a structural thing. While Thai people generally embrace liberal humanism due to their Buddhist beliefs, the elite social structure still tries to hold onto the slavery based society of the past. The police are the primary fulcrum of their power, in a cross relationship with organized crime. The military waxes and wanes in its control, but it’s the police and dark powers that truly control Thailand.

What does “worthy” mean? Isn’t that a value judgment? Can’t different groups of people reach different conclusions about worth?

Free speech as you understand it is an american thing. More specifically, it's a popularized and idealized version of free speech that has no basis in reality or law. All free speech rights around the world are defined by governments, culture, law and history. Germany's free speech is markedly different from american free speech for obvious reasons.

Also, you are mistaken when you link free speech to human beings. Corporations have free speech rights. Corporations aren't human beings.

In the idealized abstract, it feels like free speech is a universal and agreed upon ideal. It isn't. Not between nations. Not even within nations. Even in the US, we have no set definition of free speech. Free speech spans from absolutists who believe all speech is legal to those who want to limit free speech to the absolute minimum as they define it.

You have inherent worth by virtue of being a human being. Do you feel that's up for debate? Are cultures that decide you have no worth as a human being based on your skin color, or religion, or caste, or last name, equal to those that don't?

> Germany's free speech is markedly different from american free speech for obvious reasons.

Germany does not have free speech so yes it is markedly different.

> Corporations have free speech rights. Corporations aren't human beings.

I'm not talking about any legal framework around free speech. If I was, I'd be talking about the First Amendment or about a specific law or court case.

The boogeymans are going to get control of the government! To stop them we better give the government all the tools needed to monitor everything at all times!

Boogeymans win an election. And gain all the tools needed.

Surprised picachu face as the kids say, I believe.

> You have inherent worth by virtue of being a human being. Do you feel that's up for debate?

Of course it's up for debate. Debate is what gave the notion of "inherent worth"[1] intellectual and popular credence in the first place. You forget that human beings were historically categorized according to a chain of being with the clergy and royalty (rather conveniently) at the top. One's worth to $DEITY and the world was determined by the height of the seat one sat on. This arrangement of affairs was treated as an unquestionable given for thousands of years in civilizations across the world. To suggest otherwise would have been treated as insanity or denounced as heresy.

The existence of Inherent worth thrives upon the fact that those who debate it depend on it. To suggest it's beyond questioning turns the idea into an article of faith.

> Are cultures that decide you have no worth as a human being based on your skin color, or religion, or caste, or last name, equal to those that don't?

Until midway through the 20th century in certain parts of the world, this was accepted as fact. In other parts of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa of all places, it's still the case today.

[1] A more rigorous term for what you're referring to is self-sovereignty. Strictly speaking, the term "inherent worth" is a contradiction in terms.

I think your argument is circular. Just a couple of decades ago, the Chinese government was euthanizing babies born in violation of the one-child policy. I think Americans look back on that policy with a degree of horror that outstrips how the Chinese view that history—a difference I think is traceable to the influence of evangelical Christianity in the U.S. versus more collectivist cultures in China. Individual human life, and individual freedoms, have always just been worth less in Asia than in the west.

>Free speech is not an American thing, it's a human thing.

Thank you for providing such a clear example of the mentality that Rayiner refers to.

worthy = Not stagnant aka not a recipe for disaster. surface stable systems ("conserved ones") are prone to violent sudden & complete collapse by a changing environment or suddenly appearing other non stagnat societies .

Ghat Gpt generate a social media account insulting the king and hide evidence pointing towards that neighbor i dislike..

How does the fact that some Asians cultures don't value human life make my argument circular? My argument is that they are wrong.

A better way to put it may be to say that rights are things that can't be granted to you by God, government, or anyone else -- only taken away.

You're right, I wasn't as articulate as I could have been, when I say "not up for debate" I mean that in an ontological sense (not in the religious meaning), human beings have worth because they are human. It's not based on religion, or race, and it's not granted by any government or organization.

It of course can be debated and @rayiner is doing a good job debating it, but IMO the worth of any individual human being is as factual and certain as 1+1=2. I'm happy to debate it but you have a hill to climb if you want to change my mind.

Can you see how even the fact that police will knock on your door for a social media post will by definition have a chilling effect on free expression? Will low wage hourly workers in the UK feel secure in voicing their dissatisfaction with their child's school knowing that, while they might be convicted of a crime for doing so, it will probably get overturned on appeal even though they'll lose their job in the interim; or, will they just shut up and go along with whatever they're unhappy about?

To be clear I'm not talking about the First Amendment, I'm talking about free speech.

Don't you think a person should be able to say what they want, when they want, without fear of persecution from their government?

As an East Asian, let me say that this sentiment is not shared by everyone. In a place like Korea, if you say that freedom of speech and protest is a western thing, you'll be ridiculed as hopelessly reactionary. We fought for (and continue fighting for) democracy and freedom not because they're western things, but because they're human things.

You might as well say heliocentrism is a western thing and Asians should be taught the earth is the center of the universe.

> You're right, I wasn't as articulate as I could have been, when I say "not up for debate" I mean that in an ontological sense (not in the religious meaning), human beings have worth because they are human. It's not based on religion, or race, and it's not granted by any government or organization.

Then I definitely agree with you.

>Do you feel that's up for debate?

Over 2000 years of philosophy would say hell yeah it's debatable.

Without some belief in a "higher power", there is nothing inherent about anything to do with humans. Sure, we can CHOOSE to ascribe every human as having value and a sanctity to human life that means we should harshly react to those who take human life for granted or cause suffering, and I absolutely and emphatically take that view, that human life is important and humans have a right to things like dignity.

But pretending that it is "inherent" is a lie. It's a thought terminating language game. Pretending that such dignity or rights are inherent only plays into those who wish to remove them. They must be CONSTANTLY and AGGRESSIVELY defended and fought for BECAUSE they are not inherent.

If we do not enforce human rights, they do not exist.

Human rights are an outcome of a regulated society. Rights can only exist when a "higher power" DOES exist, so without a god to enforce things, we must make our own higher power to enforce rights. The State.

The only inherent rights in nature are physics, chemistry, and biology. They aren't very conducive to society in general, and certainly not one that wants to build smartphones or farms.

I grew up and chose to remain in the US, and I have never seriously questioned the American norm around speech, but if I lived in a society that never had such a norm, I imagine I would regard the advocates for introducing such a norm into my society to have the burden of proof that doing so would be worth it.

I respect the advocates who make a consequentialist argument for the norm, but not the advocates that say that free speech is a natural right or a God-given right and believe that that settles the question.

Don’t you think it’s a rather large coincidence that western countries just so happened to discover these “human things” and insofar as these ideas were adopted in Asia, it was after extensive intervention by western countries? In the case of south korea, for example, after military occupation by the U.S.?

Heliocentrism is an observable fact about the universe. Can you show me democracy and freedom of speech in a telescope or microscope?

>if you're sincere about catching criminals you would want even more intrusion into online spaces

Why?

For 40 years, Police in the US have been given basically carte-blanche to do whatever dragnet surveillance they want, as long as it "technically" is done by a third party they just buy services from. Police have had constant and perfect visibility into the digital world, with almost no moderating force, and yet they're so bad at finding culprits that violent crime clearance rates are still a coinflip.

Oh actually that's just in my State. ME claims the national violent crime clearance rate is ~20%. Jesus.

It seems obvious to me that police departments are either utterly incapable of, or utterly unwilling of, doing their damn job. We have given them near infinite power and zero responsibility and they've spent those immense resources being trained that everyone is trying to kill them, being taught how to shoot people first and ask questions later, and harassing people, often including journalists literally exposing their mob activity.

Please don't give them more power until they demonstrate an ability to productively use the power we have already given them.

>Can't imagine why this person got jail time for that given that it was just idiocy, but still

Lots of "idiocy" is explicitly illegal. Being dumb isn't an excuse to commit a crime. Literal children in the US get in trouble (legally, as in, sent to juvie) for bomb threats all the time.

Making a bad judgement call, like "surely everyone will understand I'm just joking about my threat to literally murder people" often has legal ramifications.

>Thais are not Westerners. They revere their king.

There are always royalists, Westerner or not.

"protesters were met with severe repression" doesn't really sound like those folks have much reverence, eh?

>So the implied accusation of hypocrisy in your comment is simply misplaced.

It's not hypocrisy I'm accusing anyone of – it's selfish, indifferent tribalism and disinterest in the mistreatment of people as long as they are "other" people.

In the case of the Netherlands we place humans above god. Ultimately Dutch philosophers came to the conclusion that the individual and their happiness are at the very epicenter of the universe. It broke the chains of mental slavery inherent to Christianity.

But as you say these things are cultural. Such ideas never found an audience in Asia.

Yep. It is honestly tiresome. It is the same bad arguments are repeated ad-nauseam. The UK government and various public entities have been repeatedly shown to abuse the powers given to them.

It doesn't matter if you show all the times it was abused, or someone life has been ruined for because they drunkely said something stupid on facebook, it is just ignored or if it later gets overturned that it is no big deal even though they had to spent months or years dealing with the legal system.

I have spoken to a lot of young people (typically men) in their 20s that just want to leave the country because they can see where this is all going.

Anyway my top comment has been made dead. I hate this site.

The preoccupation with “‘other’ people” is a manifestation of western individualism.

Any more than a defamation law suit?

Do you think it would be better to have people sue those who insult them on social media, in order to bankrupt them -- as in so-called Free Speech america? Where on earth do you imagine free speech is so protected that your worry is a (2 or 3) in 70 million-short that you'd have to talk to a police officier?

The idea that we have police investigating social media posts (and the like) is largely just made up. Its a handful of cases.

Do you understand that you cannot have 100% perfect decision making (of police, or anyone else) in a society -- and that the people who want you to demand this 100% are the ones organsising murders on these platforms? The ones kidnapping people and enslaving them in foreign prisons?

You're just playing a useful idiot. The idea that people in the UK are, at large, even aware of these cases is nonesense, let alone are worried about a police visit for a social media post. Just open twitter: are any of the millions of UK profiles in any sense "reserved" or chilled by these police visits?

The people who are spouting this nonesense are worried because they use these platforms to incite race riots whose aim is to kill people. Have a little perspective.

You're talking about how everyone reveres their king and don't share in the values of protest or freedom of speech, in an article about those very people being abused.

Arguing with a royalist trying to pretend that opposition and non-unity doesn't exist doesn't really have a point.

> Free speech is not an American thing, it's a human thing

Why? To what extent? There are multiple correct answers to these problems. The best universal one is allowing folks to migrate to a cultural configuration they like instead of dictating what values others should hold.

Sure, I agree, but why take this person out of society for something like this when you can fine them or make them so community service? Certainly that's a deterrent?

> Don't you think a person should be able to say what they want, when they want, without fear of persecution from their government?

It is possible to both believe something and at the same time, recognize that the belief is not universally held.

> if I lived in a society that never had such a norm, I imagine I would regard the advocates for introducing such a norm into my society to have the burden of proof that doing so would be worth it.

Thank you for being open-minded and for having empathy.

Because you say you are right. That’s the circular part.

They think you are wrong, because they say they are right.

I think you will find a great many cultures would fight you to the death over that - especially if it meant women leaving.

Apart from the fact that you have private prosecution in the UK, there's definitely a difference between private action for compensation and state action that might come with a criminal record.

The UK is the home of Cautions and ASBO's where you find out you have a criminal record just like that.

A place where you'd rather call the police than intervene to stop an ongoing crime because you might end up with a criminal record.

Canada of course is similar here.

It's all a little unconvincing when the US is enslaving people in foreign prisons at the whim of a president.

The question isn't whether UK society is the freest imaginable -- but at the moment, it is very plausibly, the freest on the earth.

No country is free if you can't defend yourself and others without worry of legal repercussions.

That's not true of the UK. Especially Scotland.

Freest in the world my big arse.

There's places in the world where slaves are openly traded today. I'll give you a clue. They tend to support Hamas.

I think one issue is that a person can affirm people have “inherent worth” and yet disagree with the conclusions you draw from it; others may question the notion of “inherent worth” yet agree with what you view as its consequences on other grounds.

e.g. many conservative religious people might agree that everyone has “inherent worth” given by God, yet disagree that implies a right to free speech, if one understands that right as including speech they view as immoral (e.g. blasphemy, pornography). Some religious people might even argue that (from their viewpoint) immoral speech inherently harms the human dignity of those who produce and consume it, and hence prohibiting that production and consumption respects their inherent worth rather than violating it

Whereas, conversely, other people might question the meaningfulness of “inherent worth” on philosophical grounds (e.g. from a positivist perspective it is rather dubious-it isn’t something you can empirically measure and it is unclear how to define it in the language of natural science), yet simultaneously favour the policies (e.g. expansive free speech rights) you seek to ground on it for other reasons-e.g. a person might support expansive free speech rights, even while rejecting the idea of “inherent worth”, simply because they find personal enjoyment in that right’s exercise

It’s circular because the reasoning goes like this: “rights are universal” because I’m right and asians are wrong; I’m right and asians are wrong because rights are universal.