UK Cops Have Decided Impolite Online Speech Is Worth A Visit From An Officer
In this case, it was Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan being visited by the Norwich Police Department on a Sunday morning. He was apparently reported by outspoken trans rights activist Adrian Harrop. Linehan had posted tweets criticizing Harrop's televised debate with a woman who had paid for a billboard depicting the dictionary's definition of the word "woman," which bothered Harrop so much he complained and got that taken down as well.
Harrop was the reason Linehan was talking to police officers about tweets that didn't even violate the Twitter Rules. He had merely suggested Harrop's steamrolling of the billboard buyer during a televised debate might have been "male privilege." Another tweet alleged Harrop had threatened women and doxxed them for not being friendly enough to his cause. This is the tweet Harrop admits bothered him so much he needed to call the police. This is the disturbing, but ultimately useless, outcome of Harrop's decision.
[...] You can't recognize free speech while still insisting everyone has to be nice to everyone else while online. You can hope that's what will happen, but you can't demand this of the general population. Unless you're in the UK, in which case you can, because you don't really recognize free speech and should probably remove that phrase from the government's collective vocabulary.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 29 2018, @01:30AM
Twitter is not just a news source. It can be a primary source if the subject of interest is using it. You aren't going to get the Gettysburg Address on there, unless it is multi-tweeted, but there is still valuable and newsworthy information.
I'm not sure where this is coming from because we have linked Twitter in summaries plenty of times. Usually when TFA linked it, but still.
Here's a good example of Twitter being a useful source: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/12/24/205202 [soylentnews.org]
That is just plain false. And nobody is asking you to comb all of the crap on Twitter to find the value. The value is being curated for you. Heck, you don't even have to click on it because Twitter is not TFA.
This can apply to any news article you link. BBC and Reuters often replace all of the text of an initial draft of a breaking news article.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]