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posted by takyon on Friday December 28 2018, @07:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the joking-while-online dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0, Touché) by fakefuck39 on Saturday December 29 2018, @04:49AM (2 children)

    by fakefuck39 (6620) on Saturday December 29 2018, @04:49AM (#779601)

    Something generating news is a source of news. It's not a source that reports on news, but it is the actual news. You either lack common sense, or think being dense is "cool" and are pretending to be dense. A tweet containing new information from OrangeWig is a source of news. A text message on my phone is a source of news. A photo of a car crash posted on 4chan is a source of news.

    News are new things you didn't know. A source is that which provides the information. I have a feeling that since you're on this site, you're not in high school, so pretending to be dumb should no longer be cool. Unless you're one of those losers that was picked on a lot, and it never gave you a chance to mentally mature into an adult. I guess keep pretending to not understand basic things, as I keep laughing at you?

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Saturday December 29 2018, @10:50PM (1 child)

    by edIII (791) on Saturday December 29 2018, @10:50PM (#779837)

    Uh huh. First, go fuck yourself. Second, Twitter is not a news source, and will never be one. It's a collection of the inane ramblings of the public, often as unverified sources, that can be treated as hearsay. Just because there is a dumpster fire of a President insisting on using it to communicate to his supporters does not mean Twitter has validity. Your insistence that 4Chan has any validity as a news source makes you sound like a fucking retard. It's not a viable source in any way, shape, or form.

    Journalists that create vapid articles that simply link to a fucking tweet, are not producing anything of value. When they actually have a source on record, or the information was published on platforms other than social media, then it can be taken seriously. Until then, it's easy to say that "my Twitter account got hacked", and just as easy to delete tweets. What does that leave the journalist with? Nothing.

    If you insist on calling it news, than call it what it is: very low quality and unusable sources

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: -1) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 31 2018, @07:35AM

      by fakefuck39 (6620) on Monday December 31 2018, @07:35AM (#780176)

      hey, you should call the SEC and tell them to put Musk back. Information suddenly loses its value when it gets placed on twitter. I guess that means anything you say is not a news source, because out of you and twitter, you are definitely the more retarded one. A news source is anything that gave you information you didn't have before. There is more spam on twitter, but there is new information on twitter. As soon as you repeat information from nasa, it stops being news. Because you're dummer than twitter. Because you are purposely pretending to be dense, and are actually proud of it.

      Is a text message a new source? How about one from your boss that says you're fired because your company just laid off 10k people? Oh shit, I forgot you hippies don't know what a job is. Carry on.