alt Hacker News> The UK arrests 12k people per year for social media posts, using vague laws to undermine free speech.
This doesn't mean anything in isolation.
> Here's the citation from the EU parliament itself [1], since I doubt you'd believe non-government sources.
Do we know each other?
> The fact that the UK and Germany are in some aspects still better than the ones I mentioned doesn't make them beacons of democracy.
No, but there aren't many that are much better so when you take all of that in to account, yes UK an Germany are beacons of democracy.
> It's sad that those countries declined so fast that we are now comparing them.
I already asked this but by what metric are they declining faste?
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>> The UK arrests 12k people per year for social media posts, using vague laws to undermine free speech.
>This doesn't mean anything in isolation.
For anyone who cares about free speech, this is very scary and very troubling, regardless of any other factors at play.
No they’re not. Without free speech there is no democracy because only speech that is allowed is by those in power/who they direct money to police
>> The UK arrests 12k people per year for social media posts, using vague laws to undermine free speech. > This doesn't mean anything in isolation.
It's pretty good proxy for freedom of speech, one of the features without which democracy is not possible.
>> Here's the citation from the EU parliament itself [1], since I doubt you'd believe non-government sources.
> Do we know each other?
Probably not, but I can smell a state believer when I see him.
> No, but there aren't many that are much better so when you take all of that in to account, yes UK an Germany are beacons of democracy.
If they are, it's a pretty low baseline. They are but a shadow of what they once were.
>> It's sad that those countries declined so fast that we are now comparing them.
> I already asked this but by what metric are they declining faste?
The article I posted has a link [1]. There you can see the number of people arrested went up from 5502 in 2017 to 12183 in 2023. It's a pretty sharp decline in freedom of speech.
[1] https://archive.is/kC5x2