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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: 2) by HiThere on Saturday December 29 2018, @05:30AM (1 child)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 29 2018, @05:30AM (#779609) Journal

    Fortunately twitter posts are short, so I would suggest that it be considered a "volatile" news source, and that it you want to reference it, you MUST copy the text you are referencing into the document containing the reference. Just like with a volatile integer.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @07:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @07:36PM (#779785)

    > Fortunately twitter posts are short, so I would suggest that it be considered a "volatile" news source, [...]

    It can be treated as hearsay.