American free speech laws are the exception, not the rule. All European free speech laws have always been balanced and weighed up against other laws. This is hardly anything new. If anything, the internet has brought forth a short time period where everything goes and the status quo is now recovering.

The legal definition of hate speech (or rather, its local equivalents) is not just "any ideas counter to beliefs I hold dearly".

▲

MiiMe19 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

American free speech laws are the superior option. A government that has the power to arrest people for saying "hateful" things is no better than China or North Korea. But at least you won't need to deal with people saying mean things (that you can block) on your computer (that no one is forcing you to use for social media) anymore, right?

▲

dirasieb 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

12 thousand people arrested per year for social media posts is "balanced"? https://archive.ph/bdEqK

at this point it's the #1 principle of the UK government, everything else comes second after putting people in jail for saying the wrong things

▲

jeroenhd an hour ago | parent [-]

What the law says and what law enforcement does are two different things. 90% of those arrests don't lead to conviction. The law isn't the problem here.

▲

dirasieb an hour ago | parent [-]

do you think being arrested for social media posts can lead to a chilling effect on those social media posts? why are we pretending that being "arrested but not convicted" is anywhere near acceptable for speech the government doesn't like?

	▲	jeroenhd 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Cops can arrest anyone for any reason. If it wasn't for speech, it'd be for public intoxication or accusations of being a paedophiles or for potentially possessing a weapon. Like the linked article states: the law doesn't permit the police to do what they do. Even if you implement an America-style "you can even yell bomb in an airport" speech law, the cops would still arrest people to intimidate them. Changing the law does nothing when the police force is simply ignoring the law.