I don't know what Joe Rogan says or who his ilk are, but this is a pretty extreme characterization of the situation that I don't think is accurate.

For example, UK police track what they consider to be undesirable "non-crime" speech, build databases of people, and intimidate them for these non crimes (knock on their doors, invite them to come to police station, advise them not to say such things, etc). This is quite a new thing, within the past ~10 years.

There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case. They arrested 12,000 people in 2023 and convicted 1,100 of those. For cases where the evidence is as cut and dried as posts made online, they could only secure convictions in 8% of cases, which seems staggering to me when UK's conviction rate generally is like 80%.

Even the conviction rate, even if you say yes there are laws to prohibit certain speech, how far is too far? Are these kinds of laws and convictions needed? Why don't all other countries need them? Why didn't UK need them 20 years ago when there was still internet and social media? Is it not concerning to you that we're told this kind of action is required to hold society together? I'm not saying that calls to violence don't happen or should be tolerated, but if it is not a lie that arresting thousands of people for twitter posts and things is necessary to keep society from breaking down then it seems like putting a bandaid on top of a volcano. It's certainly not developing a resilient, anti-fragile society, quite the opposite IMO.

Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?

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amarant 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Damn I keep forgetting the UK is still located in Europe. Ever since they left the union they feel like their own continent.

Actually they feel like they might secretly be the fifty first state!

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seattle_spring 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case

Such as?

> Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?

Horrible underground extremist? Not so much. More likely just someone who consumes a very particular slice of media that puts a dishonest (at best) spin on situations like this.

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stinkbeetle 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> > There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case

> Such as?

That was the only thing in my comment you took issue with? Great, that's easy to clear up because there's a few around. Here's one

https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/yorkshire-man-a...

Arrested for saying "F--- Palestine. F--- Hamas. F--- Islam. Want to protest? F--- off to Muslim country and protest."

> Horrible underground extremist? Not so much. More likely just someone who consumes a very particular slice of media that puts a dishonest (at best) spin on situations like this.

Hmm. Was your previous post a dishonest (at best) spin on it too? That would be consistent with your claim if you are a consumer of a very particular slice of media and did not know you can find articles from a whole range of publications about this stuff easily on the internet.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/19/arresting-pa...

https://www.forbes.com.au/news/world-news/people-are-being-t...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2922w73e1o (Online speech laws need to be reviewed after Linehan arrest, says Streeting)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/13/uk-decision-to-ban-...

https://www.politico.eu/article/freedom-speech-suspicion-bri...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/world/europe/graham-lineh...

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/palestine-action-ruling...

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/03/uk/uk-farage-free-speech-...

https://www.fire.org/news/uk-government-issues-warning-think...

https://www.foxnews.com/world/shocking-cases-reveal-britains...

You really don't need to be some obscure basement dweller to have any kind of vague inkling that something might be a little on the nose in the proverbial state of Denmark.

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oezi 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The key thing to understand is that Europeans want clear rules around hate speech, online harassment and such. Thus lawmakers are acting to find laws which encapsulate these. In Germany, we have some simple ones surrounding using Nazi symbols and speech. These rules generally work well in our civil law context. Civil law usually is rather broad strokes and there might be cases where something injust happens which requires tuning laws.

If you come from a common law context the whole idea might seem strange.

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deaux 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The key thing to understand is that Europeans want clear rules around hate speech

Regardless of my personal thoughts on this (complicated), simply putting "many" in front of "Europeans" does a lot to diminish further alienation of those who don't, helping you achieve your goals. It takes 0.5 seconds.

	▲	oezi an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed

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stinkbeetle 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The key thing to understand is that Europeans want clear rules around hate speech, online harassment and such.

Do they? Or is it being pushed upon them? And why is it "the key thing" here?

> Thus lawmakers are acting to find laws which encapsulate these.

I suspect it has been the reverse, the ruling class desperately wants those powers and if the common people are now in favor of them it is more than likely because of intensive campaigns from their governments and corporations to change their minds.

> In Germany, we have some simple ones surrounding using Nazi symbols and speech. These rules generally work well in our civil law context. Civil law usually is rather broad strokes and there might be cases where something injust happens which requires tuning laws.

Some laws existing does not mean some other laws won't be unjust. Or that legislated laws will always be right and not require "some tuning".

> If you come from a common law context the whole idea might seem strange.

The different systems of law don't seem all that strange to me at least, but the thread you are replying to is discussing censorship in the European nation of the UK.

Further, what we are discussing involves executive police powers (intimidation, arrests, compiling lists), as well as legislated laws, so it is not really just some quirk of common law at all.

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LAC-Tech an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I think if you come from a German context the concept of free speech is probably strange to you in general - because no one in living memory has ever had it. Not in Weimar, not in the Nazi period, not in East Germany and not in the Federal Republic.

Unless you understand concepts like "Natural Rights" the idea of a government not being able to curtail what you say will remain completely foreign to you.

	▲	oezi 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That isn't really what we perceive (at least if educated). We see that Free Speech is not an absolute right, but is secondary to the most important right which for Germans is Human Dignity. It might be foreign to you because your constitution and history doesn't put the same value on it than our history taught us.