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The woman accused of being first to spread the fake rumours about the Southport killer which sparked nationwide riots has been arrested.
Racist riots spread across the country after misinformation spread on social media claiming the fatal stabbing was carried out by Ali Al-Shakati, believed to be a fictitious name, a Muslim aslyum seeker who was on an MI6 watchlist.
A 55-year-old woman from Chester has now been arrested on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred, and false communication. She remains in police custody.
While she has not been named in the police statement about the arrest, it is believed to be Bonnie Spofforth, a mother-of-three and the managing director of a clothing company.
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While she has not been named in the police statement about the arrest, it is believed to be Bonnie Spofforth, a mother-of-three and the managing director of a clothing company.
They really shouldn’t be naming people like that without being sure of it. “Believing” isn’t knowing and if it’s not her, then she could be in for a lot harassment online and offline.
The irony of naming someone as the “woman shares name of man she believes was the one arrested for crime before the police released the name” before the police release the name is incredibly ridiculous.
It’s “Metro” it’s a free newspaper that’s available on every bus in the UK owned by the same people as the infamous paper: the Daily Mail. It has the same low-quality journalism but with the opposite spin (centre-left).
I wouldn’t trust those two papers to wipe my arse clean because there’d be more shit smeared onto my cheeks!
They’re confident enough that they feel they won’t get a libel suit and that has to count for something, even if it is a rag because honestly if they have the name wrong I’d love to be that woman: Instant mortgage paid off and at least one full board holiday to Magaluf.
I heard someone say it was that khannie fella from gemmyverse or something.
Metro UK - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Metro UK:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - United Kingdom
Wikipedia about this sourceFine. You get an upvote for self improvement and being useful for once… but I’m still going to be bitchy about it 😊
As much as this behavior is appalling, blaming it on one individual is absurd. Social networks provide incentives to lie and stir people up, it can even be profitable. As long as that’s the reality, there will be lies that cause riots.
Not if they start facing repercussions for their actions, like this woman is.
bingo. change has to start somewhere.
I look at it the way I look at drunk driving. If you drink and drive, most of the time you’re going to be fine. You’re not going to get in an accident, and you’re not going to get caught. But what you’re doing is still dangerous and wrong.
If you do get caught because you were swerving all over the road and a cop saw you, you’re going to be in some shit, but it probably won’t ruin your life. If you cross the divider into oncoming traffic and obliterate a family in a minivan, on the other hand, once you’re out of the hospital you should be dragged to court and then to prison for what you actually did.
Deliberately spreading misinformation online is like driving drunk. You’re going to get away with it 99% of the time, and nothing major will actually come from the lies you spread specifically. However, if you’re so reckless with your lies that you cross that metaphorical divider and start a series of escalating race riots that do demonstrable damage, then you get to suffer the consequences for what you’ve done.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
But that is why, if they catch you, and you haven’t obliterated a family, you still catch heat.
This lying bitch isn’t likely to catch nearly enough to deter future drunk driving at the keyboard. When we catch you driving drunk you lose your fucking license.
You don’t think we should blame the one person who made up the lie and sparked racist riots across the country?
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well, ya it isn’t, those are home-grown British patriots running around with machetes
Social media is a huge fucking problem. Maybe not as serious as climate change, but people are dying because of a few bad faith actors. Something needs to be done but I’m not sure what.
This is just the current tech’s version of a timeless problem, though. People have always been able to just say shit and cause problems because others believed them.
Examples:
Emmett Till was lynched back in the 1950s due to a lying white woman, becoming an iconic part of the civil rights movement.
In the late 1930s, the War of the Worlds story freaked a bunch of people out when it was first broadcast.
In 1897, Mark Twain’s death was falsely reported enough that he publicly commented about it.
There’s also the Great Moon Hoax in 1835.
William Anderton is a famous example of fake news from the 1700s.
we’ve even got fake news in ancient Rome involving Octavian, Marc Antony, and Cleopatra.
People will always be doing this dumb shit, whether it’s a town crier, a printing press, or a social media site.
The key is to exercise critical thinking and promote its use to everyone.
I think it’s also regulation and a legal system. Anarchy doesn’t work. It’s a Tragedy Of The Commons problem. It’s always ruined by a few ass holes. The Commons need a mechanism to weed itself. I.e. Rules and enforcement of those rules.
Problem is Xitter is a centralized closed monopoly thing owned by a crazy near trillionaire. The Commons has no control of it. It’s a diseased setup.
Fun fact, the tragedy of the commons is a fictitious construct invented by British nobility to justify their taking ownership of commonly held land
It has many appliances and no doubt many names. But it’s easy to work out on first principals. Without a system of enforced rules, ass holes take over and ruin it for everyone (including themselves). Places without law and order are a mess and normally end up with laws set by war/drug lord. Until they are murdered and the next one takes over.
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This can’t be a serious comment.
Yes we do. His name is Axel Rudakubana and he was born in Cardiff. Get this, he was a Christian who went to church. Almost the opposite of the rumors spread that he was some Muslim immigrant.
Also, I’d like to mention it’s interesting to me that so many people are against immigrants when it is those people who live in countries that bomb, destabilize, and destroy these countries. Where do you think those people will go? Hold your government accountable and it will be less of a problem. Not to mention the effects of colonization.
The population issue is your own fault. Have more babies, it’s not a conspiracy.
Yep, I keep pointing that out too. The UK colonized half the world and now white right-wing English people can’t figure out why people they colonized have the gall to move from Lahore to Bristol.
Thank you.
Fuuuuuuck off
Is being a minority bad?
Remind me what’s dangerous about minorities close to being majorities?
Why dangerously?
Found Jeremy Clarkson’s Lemmy account
In fairness even Clarkson isn’t this much of an ignorant bigot
He’s pretty up there
“Minorities” are actually dangerously close to becoming the majority in most White/first world nations.
That kind of lies.
At the time of the 2021/22 Census, 16% of people in the UK had been born abroad – a total of around 10.7 million migrants. Although the foreign-born population has increased further between 2021 and 2024, no reliable data are available for later years.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-an-overview/
Prove it. Show us the stats. You can’t, but at least try.
Good. She deserves it.
I would like to suggest that Rwanda would be an appropriate place to serve her sentence.
lol. We’re short of prison space so get the deal with Rwanda for immigrants changed to be criminals instead.
Good, fuck Nazis.
Thin line between opinion, free speech, and a lie. I do not want to follow the example being set in Europe. This is the road that leads to authoritarian rule. Who defines truth, hate speech, and opinion. When the other side wins an election are you now the criminal? Will different truths exist in red and blue states? City and rural? No thank you.
real big “why can’t I yell fire in this building?” vibes.
why do people pretend there isn’t or shouldn’t be any human element in legal situations? who decides what’s free speech or a lie? how is this even a question? who decides what’s a murder or self defense? who decides what’s assault or not?
this is why there’s a court system. you can’t automate law.
Thin line between opinion, free speech, and a lie.
And yet, it’s there. Just as it is in defamation law.
Who defines truth, hate speech, and opinion[?]
A jury of your peers and the Public Order Act 1986.
The US has free speech. Apart from all the exceptions it carves out and designates not protected speech, including but not limited to incitement, threats and harassment, sedition, and obscenity. Obscenity in particular was famously ‘defined’ for a while as “I know it when I see it”. So why draw the line at hate speech?
Is it not a weird state of affairs when saying “X is a paedo” is legally actionable but saying “trans people are all paedos and X is trans” isn’t, even week when X’s house gets burned down either way?
When the other side wins an election are you now the criminal?
Sure, the UK parliament could pass a law saying criticising the prime minister is now illegal. The courts will inevitably issue a declaration of incompatibility with human rights law, but the government, in theory, could ignore it. If the public swallows it. But there’s nothing really stopping that happening in the US either. Congress could pass a law making it illegal to criticise the president, and since the president gets to pick the judges, it could almost certainly come under the sedition exception to the first amendment if the president really wanted it to pass. If the public swallows it.
And that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day. Whether or not the public swallows it. For all the US right wing likes to harp on about freeze peach that sure doesn’t seem to apply if you want to say something bad about America or use the word cisgender. Do you really think the American public is much less likely to support authoritarianism than the British public?
One thing that isn’t really touched on because it never got published is that Spofforth has been an active organizer for the far right since 2020. Since then she has been active in anti Drag Queen Story Hour harrasment and targeting hotels. Another example is Yorkshire Rose (Amanda Smith) who has been doing the exact same but to a larger extent.
My main concern is that these fascist agitators have been placed into prisons with people of colour and leftwing activists for an extended period of time.
Karens been lying fr centuries but becuase middle aged white woman can do no wrong, many people got killed or imprisoned over it.
Only now has society admitted that they lying a lot for stupid reasons like racism or just BC fuck you due to camera phones…
Similar to the story with cops. About time botha team held accountable for exploiting the system.
I hope all people suffereing from the rampage by this mob will sue this woman for damages.
Surprisingly balanced and civil discussions in these comments. Super proud to be here 💪 this would not happen elsewhere
She’s a millionaire, so not a lot of support for her.
You actually raise a very interesting point.
Is this discussion so civilized because people here are civilized or just because it alligns with the majority of lemmys political views? Would it look any different if it went against wealthy people instead of immigrants?
This.
to be fair, wealthy people aren’t routinely discriminated against, they literally are some of the most powerful people.
I wish that was really the case.
Oh man, we need some of that shit in the US. Arrest these right wing media nut jobs and their Jewish laser bullshit.
Careful what you wish for. Our freedom of speech is a pretty big thing we have. You want the guy who tweeted that Vance was a couch fucker to be thrown in prison or some shit?
I mean Rogan and Kyle Rittenhouse got canceled this week by trumpers for daring to not say trump is their favorite weirdo. Free speech is mostly a bludgeon that is currently only allowed to be wielded by in groups.
If you spread a knowingly false fact with the intent of causing riots, imo that’s a good law. Nobody is going to riot over the couch fucking tweet.
People complaining about you is not the same thing as being put in jail
“People complaining about you” is a weird way to say “death threats”
On the internet it tends to come with the territory unfortunately
When you are calling these fucking assholes weirdos, do you realize how fucking many kids have had to live through that stigma being slung at them unfairly and hurtfully?
Do you know why one of the worlds most loved and celebrated humans calls himself Weird Al Yankovich?
Yes im venting im sorry but this new tactic against the enemies of humanity is going to cause damage to people who are already and always have been vulnerable.
Shame on everyone who is jumping on this band wagon with absolutely no understanding of the consequences you are having.
I hope you can live with yourself for being part of the reason kids feel like they need to take a gun, go to school, and start shooting their bullies. While thats not the motivation of all these school shootings it was very much a big part of Columbine happening.
So go ahead and keep doing harm to a small group of people you didnt give enough thought to before you propagate this moniker for people are some of the worst people in history
As somebody who grew up being called weird for having head trauma as a kid, you missed the ball here. Kids have a way of cutting egos with even harmless words. Bullies should be weird. Assholes should be weird. As in they shouldn’t be normalized. The word does have a meaning and its not inherently bad, but it can be with the correct intonation and facial expression
I’m not missing the ball thank you very much.
But you are obviously my point because you just restated everything i was talking about.
I couldn’t agree with you more
There’s a difference between getting canceled and getting in actual trouble by the government.
Calling a dude a couch fucker is not the same as yelling fire in a crowded movie theater.
And really, the worst thing the JD Vance rumors will do is cause a sales bump for Siemens couches by Republican males.
Only those too propagandized to realize it believe you actually have the right to free speech in the USA. You’re guilty of something, all the time, in the USA. If they want to get you for something, they can. It’s that simple. It’s not hyperbole and it is the fascist playbook used in the USSR before as well.
You’ll be hard pressed to find people in the US who get in trouble for criticism of the government or most other things. I can freely say the president sucks and cops are dirty, and no one will lift a finger in the US. I’m allowed to say this. There’s a good many countries where you can’t.
It’s hyperbole but it’s not out of the realm of possibility for that to change, given someone’s litigious nature, to declare that activity to be treasonous…
That’s a tall hill to climb. It’s literally been protected by the Supreme Court that you can fly a flag that says something like “Fuck Biden”(I think biden did a fairly good job, fyi). There are limitations to freedom of speech, but criticism and opinions aren’t any of them.
I hope so. I really do. There seems to be interest in ignoring the constitution that they claim to protect…
ya, but that’s republicans for the vast majority
Yeah the reality is if the courts start letting the government arrest people for speech, it’s those going on about “woke mind viruses” who are gonna be the first to weaponize that. Without free speech, the left ceases to exist.
The left have been utterly excluded from free speech protections.
Yes, they have.
Freedom of speech should not equal to the freedom of consequences. You should be able to say whatever you want, but when you lie with intent of causing harm, you should be accountable.
I’m okay with this phrase except for the word “intent”. If we give someone the power to try to assess our intent, it can easily go the way of totalitarian states where they say you have a bad intent any time you criticize the government.
You should be punished for outcome, not intent. If you say something provably untrue that results in riots or murders, you should be held accountable for the outcomes of those statements. This is not that different from our current libel laws.
But all criminal law already has a concept of Mens rea (guilty mind) baked in. The reasonable proving of intentions is nessisary for the severity of the sentencing in almost all cases under review and has been at least as long as anyone here has been alive. It isn’t the sole factor of creating a criminal charge because - as you stated you also need to prove harms but saying people are not punished for intent and treating that as only the tool of strictly authoritarian government is factually untrue.
Yes my point was that “guilty mind” alone shouldn’t be enough to charge you with a crime.
Agreed, but you also said :
I’m okay with this phrase except for the word “intent”. If we give someone the power to try to assess our intent, it can easily go the way of totalitarian states where they say you have a bad intent any time you criticize the government.
And I am pointing that the power to assess intent is actually a norm in the justice system. Too many people on here are very quick to catastrophize things that are actually very culturally normal and stable in systems of law. Your point is not the same one I was making, hence why I referenced your likely intended point in my post.
Furthermore if outcomes are what gets punished, then what happens if people get hurt because you said something provably true? Poeple aren’t rational at the worst of times.
Untrue does not automatically mean its a lie. For an untruth to be a lie it also must intend to deceive.
All lies are untrue but all untruths are not lies in the same way all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares.
But even untruths that intend to deceive aren’t automatically lies, could be a joke though it’s probably debatable with regards to joking. But then that’s exactly why intent must be determined when considering the totality of any situation/incident
Something can be done for amusement that isn’t a joke. And we all should be aware of the nature of Trolls at this point online
I think you mean freeze peach
If the hard right propaganda machine isn’t shut down we will deal with the risk of a fascist takeover every four years for the rest of our country’s existence.
Free speech is not absolute, and the ‘fighting words’ precedent certainly applies to fascist instigators.
We almost had to deal with the free speech limitations of KOSA. The power to limit free speech will eventually be abused.
We have always lived with exceptions to freedom of speech. Libel, slander and obscenity law as examples. The sanctity of medical records is another.
The UK also technically does not and never has had any freedom of speech enshrined in law and the government has always been able to squash print and media publications that post things deemed a danger to security.
Russia on the other hand holds a constitutional freedom of speech and the press… But will also send you to prison for publishing “LGBTQIA propaganda”
Americans treat this misplaced concept of freedom of speech as this full access pass as a universal good that is the only thing holding us all back from totalitarian regimes. In reality however speech has both never been totally free even in America as plenty of exceptions have always existed and having those protections is way more optional in other democratic nations then they would believe. It also does not protect from abuse on it’s own.
Remember that any and all tenants of free speech aren’t nessisarily a universal good. If there are measurable harms being done to people your nation is allowed to carve out an exception. It’s on you to critically evaluate the individual exception for potential issues but not specifically on the basis of a dogmatic adherence to an idea of free speech. Totally free speech itself could actually be harmful to a society and in fact has already proven to be hence libel/slander laws.
When you spread outright lies about someone what sparks violence, it’s a bit different, right? Or are you on the side of the woman who lied about Emmet Till and got him killed? Because if it was known she lied about the thing at the time, I’d say she should have been jailed the same as his killers.
Hard to believe anyone would riot over JD Vance fucking a couch though
Obviously when it works out in my favor… I’m all for it.
But really, slander is slander. JD has plenty to make fun of that’s real. Just dig a little.
It’s not slander if you can’t prove it’s not true.
Well, you’re technically correct. How does one prove they never fucked a couch?
You fucked a couch! Prove me wrong. 😛
I don’t need to, I’m not accusing you of slander. 😉
Well, now I have a visual. 🤤
UK has freedom of speech, but there are limits. Been a Nazi is not covered.
As Chomsky said, “That’s not freedom of speech”
In which case, perhaps unqualified “freedom of speech” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
(I appreciate that Chomsky’s opinion resonates more with 1968 than now.)
In which case, perhaps unqualified “freedom of speech” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I believe it is. But if you don’t that’s your belief, but at least admit you therefore do not believe in freedom of speech.
I think unqualified freedom to say anything can lead to negative utility, pragmatically speaking. Malicious lies bring less than nothing to discourse.
I’m concerned that the libel system can be abused, of course; and I don’t approve of arresting octogenerians under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for shouting “nonsense!” at Jack Straw. But I don’t see there being a need to draw a distinction between online and in person speech, and I think that incitement to riot isn’t something I’d typically defend.
Having said that: I hope the woman in question (who has a history of being a deniable pot-stirrer) gets a trial rather than copping a plea, because the bounds of these things are worth testing.
Malicious lies bring less than nothing to discourse.
I don’t trust anyone to evaluate that is the problem.
Is libel freedom of speech?
I personally believe it is. Legally it isn’t in the US. But luckily courts are pretty hesitant to actually prosecute it most of the time
If someone unironically advocated for that, then yes.
Lies aren’t free speech.
Though without the Context I have a feeling that this was to show show how ridiculous the allegations of him are.
My understanding is that it was a made up name, so there is no “him”. But also, she’s claiming she heard it from someone else, so why is she the one getting in all the trouble, as opposed to everyone else who spread it around?
This is the first time i have seen someone with an Israeli flag on Lemmy. Congratulations.
They arrested the guy too. And I’m all for it.
what? what the fuck is going on here.
Context, fast. This is a context-robery!
Did they?
Looks like German runes
