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.

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?

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

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?

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.