[2ndDivisionVet]

Anyone here think "Oh, that'll never happen here" and shrug it off as a UK thing?

[SWAMPSNIPER]

You must keep order in a termite colony!

[Hardraade]

The problem isn’’t 20th century laws, but 7th century laws.

Humanity is devolving right back to not quite even animal, more like hive.

[Vanders9]

I think you’d have to be very naive (or a fervent believer in an extreme form of American “exceptionalism”) to think that it won’t.

[Vanders9]

"Fifty years ago someone would have made a really offensive comment in a public space and it would have been heard by relatively few people," said Mike Harris of free-speech group Index on Censorship. "Now someone posts a picture of a burning poppy on Facebook and potentially hundreds of thousands of people can see it...

This is a very true statement, but it's also a completely irrelevent one. Remarks do not become MORE offensive just because more people see or hear them, they simply become just as offensive to more people. You can't increase the severity of punishment for offensive remarks on the mere basis that more people are exposed to them. That's nonsense.

In any case, having laws against "offending" people is a very disturbing trend for any nation with even a pretension to free speech and democratic process. Progressives, nationalists, secularists and militant atheists offend me very deeply on a regular basis, but I don't call for them to be locked up for it, (and not just because I know it would be counterproductive to do so).

There are, and should be, some laws limiting freedom of speech. You dont, and shouldnt, have the freedom to tell lies about someone, for example. But I don't see how the growth of social media justifies any extension to those laws at all.