> You don't think this counts as "arrested for online posts"?
You've definitely missed some context. For example, and fairly significantly:
> Connolly previously admitted intending to stir up racial hatred.
If you plead guilty to a charge, there's not much defense left.
The offence she admitted to doesn't even take account of whether it's committed online - it's law that was passed in 1986. An aggravating factor that led to the sentence she got was that she had in fact posted multiple times in the same sort of way.
So the context: she posted similar things online multiple times, she pleaded guilty, and the law in question can apply to offline activity as well -- all right, but all this still literally translates into "arrested for online posts".
She didn't throw rocks, she didn't set things on fire, she didn't stab anyone -- it was her speech that got her a multi-year jail term.
This alone makes free speech proponents upset, regardless of whether there were riots ongoing or not, or whether they agree or disagree with her political position.
I wasn't saying the context I gave was an exhaustive list, I was suggesting that having Googled her name and maybe skimmed a couple of news articles, you might need to do some more reading before forming too much of an opinion.
> She didn't throw rocks, she didn't set things on fire, she didn't stab anyone -- it was her speech that got her a multi-year jail term.
Your contention seems to be that incitement shouldn't be an offence?
That's at odds with legal systems all over the world, including the US, where Brandenburg v Ohio [0] holds that if inflammatory speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action" that is an exception to the First Amendment and can be prosecuted, which seems to be at odds with "regardless of whether there were riots ongoing or not".
The original point of my first post in this thread was that lumping together arrests for stalking, incitement to violence and other forms of harassment to produce a big scary number makes the argument seem utterly dishonest. The fact that so many "free speech proponents" fixate on one example when, if the stated number is true, there should be thousands of examples every year is a good demonstration of that.
- Posted that three federal judges "deserve to die" with their photos and addresses
- Result: Conviction overturned as protected political hyperbole
Connolly's "set fire to all the hotels" would likely be viewed as angry hyperbole in the United States, not meeting Brandenburg's strict standard.
The distinction: The US prosecutes actual incitement (directing a mob to attack a building RIGHT NOW). The UK prosecutes offensive speech that merely might inspire someone, somewhere, someday. Your Brandenburg citation actually proves this difference rather than refutes it.
You want thousands of examples? Check Twitter during any US political crisis - they're not prosecuted precisely because Brandenburg protects them.
Point taken, but incitement is still an offence in other countries. That the US has specific, and particularly permissive, laws around what constitutes speech is neither here nor there.
> You want thousands of examples?
Of people people prosecuted for innocuous speech in the UK, the original claim in this thread. Brandenburg doesn't apply there.
I misunderstood what you were trying to imply but still think your premise is mistaken. My reply is merely directed at anyone implying the US's free speech-laws are somehow comparable to the authoritarian anti-free-speech laws the UK has.
Edit: If I remove the reference to Brandenburg, I'm not sure my point substantially changes:
Incitement is an offence in the UK and also in other countries. You can argue whether that should be the case or not but that's completely orthogonal.
Gathering a whole lot of offenses which happened to include online activity to produce a big number of people who you can claim were prosecuted for something that you can claim is as innocuous as "online posts" is dishonest.
You're playing a shell game with definitions to justify authoritarian speech laws.
> lumping together arrests for stalking, incitement to violence and other forms of harassment to produce a big scary number
But that's exactly the problem - the UK defines "incitement" and "harassment" so broadly that ordinary political speech becomes criminal:
UK "Harassment" includes:
- Misgendering someone online
- Posting offensive jokes
- Retweeting protest footage
- Criticizing immigration policy "grossly"
UK "Incitement" includes:
- Lucy Connolly's Facebook post (31 months)
- Jordan Parlour's "every man and their dog should smash [hotel] up" (20 months)
- Tyler Kay's "set fire to all the hotels" retweet (38 months)
NONE of these would meet Brandenburg's standard in the US. They lack:
- Directed at specific individuals
- Imminent timeframe
- Likelihood of producing immediate action
> if the stated number is true, there should be thousands of examples every year
There ARE thousands. In 2023:
- 3,537 arrested for online speech
- 1,991 convicted under Section 127 Communications Act
- Hundreds more under Public Order Act
You don't hear about most because "UK citizen arrested for offensive tweet" stopped being newsworthy years ago.
You're using the word "incitement" to equate UK thought policing with legitimate US restrictions on speech that creates immediate danger. That's like defending China's censorship because "every country bans fraud."
The definitions matter. The UK criminalizes hurt feelings. The US criminalizes immediate threats to public safety.
How many of those were examples of "hurt feelings" and not "put a whole lot of foreigners at risk of their lives" or any of the other classes of "online posts"? We don't know because in their rush to say "the UK's arresting 30 people a day for posting things online", the Economist didn't bother breaking that down.
> NONE of these would meet Brandenburg's standard in the US.
None of them happened in the US so that's irrelevant. My misunderstanding of the precedent around incitement isn't central to my point.
You've definitely missed some context. For example, and fairly significantly:
> Connolly previously admitted intending to stir up racial hatred.
If you plead guilty to a charge, there's not much defense left.
The offence she admitted to doesn't even take account of whether it's committed online - it's law that was passed in 1986. An aggravating factor that led to the sentence she got was that she had in fact posted multiple times in the same sort of way.
Details of her appealing the sentence as excessive, rejected by the appeals court https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Lucy-Con...