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411 points donpott | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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nickdothutton ◴[] No.44983582[source]
Step 1, pass law.

Step 2, demand compliance.

Step 3, upon not hearing of compliance, levy fines.

Step 4, upon non payment of fines, declare in breach of (2).

Step 5, block site from UK using DNS, in the same manner as torrent sites etc.

5 was always the goal, 2 to 4 are largely just performative.

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sunshine-o ◴[] No.44984120[source]
This is the only power they have left.

The UK government has lost control of what happen in the physical world on their own island so now the bureaucrats play a fantasy game where they are gonna enforce their rules and dominion in their former colonies or the digital world.

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bko ◴[] No.44988528[source]
I heard things about UK arresting people for social media posts but thought it was just a few cases cherry picked. But I recently looked up the scale of arrests and it's really insane.

Police are arresting over 12,000 people each year for social media posts and other online communications deemed “grossly offensive,” “indecent,” “obscene,” or “menacing.” This averages to around 33 arrests per day.

These arrests are primarily made under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, laws which criminalize causing “annoyance,” “inconvenience,” or “anxiety” to others through digital messages.

Utterly insane.

https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-stru...

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PieTime ◴[] No.44988616[source]
Sadly this trend is echoed in the US as well since 2023 many have been arrested for their freedom of speech https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rnzp4ye5zo
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bko ◴[] No.44988698{3}[source]
I don't think that's the same thing:

> The DHS statement says that Ms Kordia had overstayed her student visa, which had been terminated in 2022 "for lack of attendance". It did not say whether she had been attending Columbia or another institution.

I think it's entirely different arresting people who overstay their visas or people on student visas that disrupt academic life. The UK regularly arrests citizens for offensive memes. There have even been cases where someone got a harsher sentence based on a tweet about sexual assault than the person who actually committed a sexual assault.

You can feel any way you'd like about free speech in America, but let's not conflate the two as being equal.

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1. verzali ◴[] No.44993211{4}[source]
I'm far more worried that America will stop me at the border and mistreat me for something I wrote online than I am about the UK. Heck, I'm more worried about visiting the US than China at the moment. The America effort to suppress free speech is very real.