alt Hacker NewsUK Government plans new powers to label dissenting movements as 'subversion'
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>Government plans new powers to label ... as ‘subversion’
As far as I can see is a lie the website has made up. None of their links include the word subversion. Subversion is not part of British law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversion#United_Kingdom
Is there some reality to this or is the website just making stuff up to object to some things they dislike?
In 2023, the number of people arrested for online comments: UK (12,183), Belarus (6,205), Germany (3,500), China (1,500).
How do people in the UK defend this? I consider myself a liberal and to defend this government is a level of hypocrisy so beyond the pale.
Am I being reactionary here? Are things actually not that bad in the UK?
Trump was right?
Why is it my earlier comment with so many upvotes got [flagged] ?
Is it because I mentioned the entity name?
Here is the comment:
"It’s ironic how the West has long championed democracy, demanded freedom of speech, and called for human rights from everyone. Only to suddenly adopt authoritarian, anti-free speech, anti-human rights, and anti-protest stances the moment free speech began to critique Israel.
It’s truly shameful to see such developments."
…and UK population plans to continue labelling policy makers as a bunch of gits.
If they were to label Israeli interference with labels then our politicians would be plastered more than Nascars.
I have a feeling that Israeli interference is exempt from such labels though.
Theres so many times I've written a comment, only to delete it on HN.
Not because of being afraid of government censorship, but because of the sheer futility of fighting peoples faith and outmoded ideas of how our market place of ideas works.
Counter speech, is NOT working. "the best ideas rise to the top" is untrue. We don't have an information economy, we have a content economy. Its the equivalent of the junk food era, just for content.
Governments around the world are going to enact speech controls. Voters are clamoring for it. Its going to eventually be a disaster.
I also do not think that there is going to be any effective opposition, if people keep showing up to battle lines drawn in the 90s and 2000s.
If you want a market place of ideas, you have to figure out how to ensure its a FAIR market place. Not a place where you pit regular folk against corporate PR teams, information teams, and behemoths of all kinds.
And for those holding out hope for decentralized solutions (Mastodon, Bluesky): These have a chance, but there is no solution to moderation labour and costs.
It’s ironic how the West has long championed democracy, demanded freedom of speech, and called for human rights from everyone.
Only to suddenly adopt authoritarian, anti-free speech, anti-human rights, and anti-protest stances the moment free speech began to critique Israel.
It’s truly shameful to see such developments.
I wish they would label Russian and Chinese influence as subversion.
But knowing the UK, they'll probably use it to jail people who post mean things on twitter.
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
The UK is speedrunning the fight to combat totalitarianism by becoming totalitarian. Of course the crucial difference between the groups, for now, is who gets to be the authority.
It really does feel like a hopeless situation. In one camp the woolly liberals being fuzzy as ever thinking if only everyone could sing happily together everything will be great (again?), and on the other those wanting to open pandora's box of fascist delights, without any sight of quite what is inside before you get to the bottom, somehow believing nothing in there will turn on them in the process.
I can’t find any mainstream news source corroborating the claim that the government has imminent plans to introduce new legislation on the basis of the review mentioned in the article. If you google “hall independent review state threats”, nothing much turns up.
At least they’re attempting to do this through law. The Trump admin is just calling out death threats against the opposition.
Of course, combined with Digital ID that will track your movements and what you say, this is a logical next step to achieve total control of the population.
Funny that nobody mentions that these things are not actually coming from government, but were lobbied by asset managers and big corporations.
This is text book fascism (marriage of big corporations and government).
Nobody voted for this.
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There is probably a legitimate basis for some powers against actual foreign intelligence operations. But the proposals in the article defining "subversion" to include environmental activism, independence movements, or criticism of UK policy show how quickly these things expand beyond their original scope. The Terrorism Act was meant to exclude domestic activists but two decades later it has been used against protest groups