Tortoise Daily Sensemaker: Be Aware. “The wife of a Conservative councillor has been jailed for 31 months for inciting racial hatred online, after calling on X for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire during the summer’s anti-immigration riots.”

technology ai, science and new things

Jailed for online hatred

The wife of a Conservative councillor has been jailed for 31 months for inciting racial hatred online, after calling on X for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire during the summer’s anti-immigration riots. Lucy Connolly is one of at least eleven people in the UK to have been charged so far for statements they made online, at least eight of whom have also been convicted. Sentences for those convicted range from an eight-week prison sentence to 38 months for a 26-year-old man who, among other things, reposted Connolly’s original post. Although Connolly eventually deleted the post in question, X found it didn’t breach its community guidelines. So what’s illegal in the real world is permitted in what Musk calls “the world’s town square”. The analogy is poisonously dishonest. If it was the world’s town square he would be obliged to police it properly, but that would hurt his margins.