This is an interesting case for two reasons:
- From the Daily Mail article, "His barrister argued the posts had 33 views between them and were the 'impotent rantings of a socially isolated man' that had no 'real-world' consequences."
Should it really matter how big your audience is?
It seems that the UK judge didn't think it mattered (or maybe he did and would have given the fellow an even stiffer sentence if he'd had a big audience). But I'm curious how we even evaluate these things once we head down the road of policing speech like this:
Is it the speech itself that is bad and a crime or is it the effects of the speech? But if we are going to prosecute people for the effects of their speech, how do we even make that connection? (Nevermind that the crazy Brits have gone as far as to prosecute people for the potential effects of their speech). I don't see this trend in modern society going anywhere good -- get ready for ever increasing inconsistency.
- According to another article, the man tweeted:
Head for the hotels housing them and burn them to the ground.
and
I think it’s time for the British to gang together, hit the streets and start the slaughter. Violence and murder is the only way now. Start off burning every migrant hotel then head off to MPs’ houses and Parliament, we need to take over by FORCE.
These are pretty awful things to say. I'm strongly in the camp of people should be able to say pretty much anything they like, but I can see how posts like these make people uncomfortable. I don't think anybody should be going to jail for saying things like this, but would it be bad if a private platform nuked his account? I don't think so.
Yet, if a private bank chose to cancel its relationship with him over these tweets, I feel less comfortable. Why? Maybe because banking is very interconnected and very necessary for daily life. So if he gets debanked in one place, he might get debanked from many places, and then how does such a person interact with society?
I don't think the government should be in the business of compelling businesses to provide services to people any more than I think governments should be chucking people in jail for the things they say.