How Thai authorities use online doxxing to suppress dissent

> The (pro democracy) protesters were met with severe repression, and in November 2020, Prime Minister Prayuth ordered authorities to bring back the enforcement of lèse-majesté, or Section 112 of the Criminal Code, which criminalizes “insulting the monarchy”. Thailand’s use of lèse-majesté has been both arbitrary and prolific; protesters can be arrested for as little as sharing social media posts that are ‘insulting to the monarchy’. Furthermore, the weaponization of lèse-majesté has devastating consequences: those convicted under Section 112 face three to 15 years in prison per count.

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.

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

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.

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...

> 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?