Prices of the electricity we use to charge

[Peter.Bridge]

Well we are not any longer in the situation we were back then, or perhaps more accurately in 2020 when we were having daily briefings on TV and bizarre restrictions imposed. The point is that this act COULD be employed to shut down debate, were people in government and the judicial system minded to do it.

I think the legal difficulty trying to prosecute someone would be the test

"the message conveys information that the person knows to be false;"

Most people that post conspiracy theories believe them. I suppose, if someone was getting a good income from youtube spreading vaccine misinformation, but they were getting all their own vaccines at the same time, you could make a case that they know the information they are posting is false.

 

[Ghost1951]

This is a MUST read article if you have any interest in the subject of the Online Communications Act and its consequences.

The persecution of ‘the plebs’

Not so long ago we went to politicians for politics and comedians for comedy. Today, like many others, I watch politicians for amusement and listen to comedians for their political insights. Whenever I want cheering up, I watch Kamala Harris riffing on a theme of her choice, or sometimes a...

www.spectator.co.uk

Short extract - fair use:

After discussing the case of Bernadette Sporforth arrested for posting the caveated name of what she thought (wrongly ) was the Suspect in the Southport murders, Douglas Murray goes on to say:

"One oddity about this is, once again, the two-tier nature of the pursuit. People like Nick Lowles, from the incorrectly named far-left campaign group Hope Not Hate, also published fake information online. That particular dolt passed around a claim (swiftly shown to be false) that a Muslim woman in Middlesbrough had had acid thrown at her from a car window. The post was seen by more than 100,000 people and led to Muslim men appearing on the streets in the belief that they had to defend their areas from racist acid-attack monsters.

Yet so far as I know Mr Lowles has not had his collar felt, perhaps because he enjoys the government’s favour, as well as backing from prominent left-wing philanthropists such as Trevor Chinn. Kenan Malik of the Observer similarly passed around misleading reports in print and online this week, but also seems strangely immune from the law."

 

[Peter.Bridge]

This is a MUST read article if you have any interest in the subject of the Online Communications Act and its consequences.

The persecution of ‘the plebs’

Not so long ago we went to politicians for politics and comedians for comedy. Today, like many others, I watch politicians for amusement and listen to comedians for their political insights. Whenever I want cheering up, I watch Kamala Harris riffing on a theme of her choice, or sometimes a...

www.spectator.co.uk

Short extract - fair use:

After discussing the case of Bernadette Sporforth arrested for posting the caveated name of what she thought (wrongly ) was the Suspect in the Southport murders, Douglas Murray goes on to say:

"One oddity about this is, once again, the two-tier nature of the pursuit. People like Nick Lowles, from the incorrectly named far-left campaign group Hope Not Hate, also published fake information online. That particular dolt passed around a claim (swiftly shown to be false) that a Muslim woman in Middlesbrough had had acid thrown at her from a car window. The post was seen by more than 100,000 people and led to Muslim men appearing on the streets in the belief that they had to defend their areas from racist acid-attack monsters.

Yet so far as I know Mr Lowles has not had his collar felt, perhaps because he enjoys the government’s favour, as well as backing from prominent left-wing philanthropists such as Trevor Chinn. Kenan Malik of the Observer similarly passed around misleading reports in print and online this week, but also seems strangely immune from the law."

Those two cases seem very different - this was from Cleveland Police

https://www.cleveland.police.uk/news/cleveland/news/2024/august/statement-regarding-online-reports-of-attacks-in-middlesbrough/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Orlo

You'd have to prove that it was false, and that Lowles knew it was false at the time he posted it - presumably (unlike Sporforth) he would be able to show where he got that information

Sporforth was also arrested for publishing written material to stir up racial hatred

 

[Ghost1951]

Those two cases seem very different - this was from Cleveland Police

https://www.cleveland.police.uk/news/cleveland/news/2024/august/statement-regarding-online-reports-of-attacks-in-middlesbrough/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Orlo

You'd have to prove that it was false, and that Lowles knew it was false at the time he posted it - presumably (unlike Sporforth) he would be able to show where he got that information

Sporforth was also arrested for publishing written material to stir up racial hatred

Indeed - I agree on the difficulty of defining what the person knew, but is it not true that Sporforth claims she had read some information and then published a caveated remark. She wrongly published the following which I have had to obtain from an archiving website because it seems tohave been erased everywhere else I looked.

“Ali Al-Shakati was the suspect, he was an asylum seeker who came to the UK by boat last year and was on an MI6 watch list. If this is true, then all hell is about to break loose.”

I fail to see how such a remark can be interpreted as an attempt to 'stir up racial hatred'. She does not urge violent or hateful action and on the contrary it appears to be fair comment under the circumstances if she believed it. I do not know of any history of provocative or racially motivated posting by this woman and the reasonable interpretation would be to assume it is what it looks like, a fair comment remark about something she found online. Also the caveat she gives (if this is true) suggests the same, she found it online, copied and pasted it and is a person shocked at what it means and what might happen.

Taking up Douglas Murray's point, it seems that the posting of some kinds of false information receive the benefit of the doubt (Nick Lowles) while others do not, even when it can be said that both might have led to disorder.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

but is it not true that Sporforth claims she had read some information and then published a caveated remark.

There are actually two tweets with the false information , worded slightly differently, she has claimed

1) That she got this information from "someone on the area" - I guess this would be pretty easy for the police to check
2) She then went on to claim that her source was another account on X. This is impossible because her tweet preceded that account's tweet by a few minutes.
3) Spofforth claims now to have gotten the information from what she believed to be a "reputable news source". She's probably referring to Channel 3 Now. - they published this rumour 61 minutes after her original tweet
4) That she saw it on a now deleted X post

I don't know who made up the false rumour that the murderer was a Muslim asylum seeker with an Arabic name on a MI6 watchlist that had arrived on a small boat but her tweet received nearly a million impressions and was spread far and wide but I can't see any other explanation but to stir up racial hatred.

 

[Ghost1951]

There are actually two tweets with the false information , worded slightly differently, she has claimed

1) That she got this information from "someone on the area" - I guess this would be pretty easy for the police to check
2) She then went on to claim that her source was another account on X. This is impossible because her tweet preceded that account's tweet by a few minutes.
3) Spofforth claims now to have gotten the information from what she believed to be a "reputable news source". She's probably referring to Channel 3 Now. - they published this rumour 61 minutes after her original tweet
4) That she saw it on a now deleted X post

I don't know who made up the false rumour that the murderer was a Muslim asylum seeker with an Arabic name on a MI6 watchlist that had arrived on a small boat but her tweet received nearly a million impressions and was spread far and wide but I can't see any other explanation but to stir up racial hatred.

Maybe you can explain how from her version of events as a woman who came across information her saying, 'If this is true, all Hell is going to kick off', you jump to a conclusion that she did this to stir up racial hatred. Could you just take me through your thinking there?

She does not have to provide us with the trail to what she says is the original post, though I can imagine she might not now be able to find it, especially since the originator may now have deleted it. It has long been the custom here in our legal system -it is actually a specific principle of it, that the prosecution bears the entire responsibility to PROVE their accusation. It is not for the defendant to prove their innocence.

Had this lady got a chequered record of making controversial, racially motivated posts, the prosecution would find it a much easier thing to prove to the required level of 'beyond reasonable doubt'. If it were Tommy Robinson, for example, I would take a different view completely, but as far as I know from a couple of news pages, this lady is not a person with such a history.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

I was saying the person that made up the rumour could be guilty of stirring up racial hatred. It is the Police's job to investigate things, not just accept peoples' accounts at face value (especially if those previous accounts don't add up)

Bernie Spofforth

Bernadette "Bernie" Spofforth (April 1969–),[3] erroneously named Bonnie Spofforth in a widely churned Daily Mail report,[4] is a UK based and South African educated businesswoman[5] and swimwear inventor[6] turned denialist and conspiracy theorist[7] best known for her arrest for instigating...

rationalwiki.org

 

[Ghost1951]

Found this video entertaining and informative.

 

[lenny]

"Some say the Tories stoked them, others say Nigel Farage; some even say Keir Starmer played a role. Who is really behind the UK’s 2024 racist riots?"

https://x.com/newsthump/status/1821489443733221482

Who is really behind the UK's 2024 racist riots? - Vox Political

Who is really behind the UK's 2024 racist riots? The Conservatives, Nigel Farage, Keir Starmer, or all three?

voxpoliticalonline.com

 

[lenny]

 

[Ghost1951]

I was saying the person that made up the rumour could be guilty of stirring up racial hatred. It is the Police's job to investigate things, not just accept peoples' accounts at face value (especially if those previous accounts don't add up)

Bernie Spofforth

Bernadette "Bernie" Spofforth (April 1969–),[3] erroneously named Bonnie Spofforth in a widely churned Daily Mail report,[4] is a UK based and South African educated businesswoman[5] and swimwear inventor[6] turned denialist and conspiracy theorist[7] best known for her arrest for instigating...

rationalwiki.org

Something of a nutter then. I despise the covid misinformation movement. Science is the only thing that stands between us and Medieval misery.

While I have a lot less sympathy for the woman, after reading that, I still don't see an open and shut case for stirring up racial hatred.

 

[Woosh]

Science is the only thing that stands between us and Medieval misery.

therein lies the problem with extremists. They don't back down when confronted with facts.
I always remember when Trump claimed that the crowd at his inauguration was bigger than Obama's. When the press asked about this, Kellyanne Conway, his then communications director, told the press that there are 'alternative facts'. Trump still claims that nobody has a bigger crowd than his.
Recently, someone got jailed for 2 months for sending malicious messages. Perhaps social media should have a fact check flag.

 

[Ghost1951]

therein lies the problem with extremists. They don't back down when confronted with facts.
I always remember when Trump claimed that the crowd at his inauguration was bigger than Obama's. When the press asked about this, Kellyanne Conway, his then communications director, told the press that there are 'alternative facts'. Trump still claims that nobody has a bigger crowd than his.
Recently, someone got jailed for 2 months for sending malicious messages. Perhaps social media should have a fact check flag.

This is one of the things that I have against him. He is a bare faced liar. You obviously can never trust a liar, especially one who is determined to keep on pushing obvious lies as boldly as he does.

I don't think a 'fact check flag' would have any impact. The day the Internet morphed into a system which allowed everyone to publish whatever they liked without any validation process, the cat was out of the bag. Not only was it possible for people to publish falsehoods they mistakenly believed, but it also made it certain that people would deliberately publish lies.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

The day the Internet morphed into a system which allowed everyone to publish whatever they liked without any validation process, the cat was out of the bag. Not only was it possible for people to publish falsehoods they mistakenly believed, but it also made it certain that people would deliberately publish lies.

The other aspect of this is the financial side, social media algorithms prioritise outrage and outrageous posts/videos because they drive engagement with the platform. These are then monetised, so the author is financially rewarded - some people are making a good living out of this.

 

[Ghost1951]

The other aspect of this is the financial side, social media algorithms prioritise outrage and outrageous posts/videos because they drive engagement with the platform. These are then monetised, so the author is financially rewarded - some people make a good living out of this.

Yes - I've seen some blatant 'lie channels' pushing absolutely obvious lies.

Someone sent me a link to a conspiracy channel which was explaining that the Challenger Shuttle Disaster crew were alive and well, and living in obscurity. This channel had a lot of viewers and was certainly making money from Youtube. The 'evidence' used to support the assertion about the crew's new life, consisted of having identified an individual who had a vague facial resemblance to one of the dead crew. It was ridiculous and obvious nonsense, but people believed it. I don't understand why the people who swallow this stuff didn't ask themselves the obvious questions like:

• Why would NASA deliberately create a spectacular failure which would threaten their future funding?
• Why would an astronaut settle for an obscure life, when they had success and prominence in their space career
• How could such a massive conspiracy be kept quiet, given that at least several hundred people would have to know about it?

 

[Woosh]

ot only was it possible for people to publish falsehoods they mistakenly believed, but it also made it certain that people would deliberately publish lies.

the contents of any post can easily be rated for fact checking using automated AI.
If the EU and UK wanted to incorporate fact check into law, most of them can be automatically filtered out.

 

[mark sutton]

Spotted this thread and don't think i've posted this piece as yet. Cost to run an ebike TL;DR - very often it'll be sub 20p per charge unless you have a battery above 700Wh.

 

[saneagle]

Recently, someone got jailed for 2 months for sending malicious messages. Perhaps social media should have a fact check flag.

They already have that on Twitter. If anybody posts shite, the community correct them, as in this example:

https://x.com/lowles_nick/status/1819829746567381197

What solves misinformation is open and free debate. Unfortunately on Covid, immigration, Ukraine, Isreal, Jan 6th, 2020 US election cheating, Hunter Biden laptop, etc. The main stream media and government departments decided what they wanted the truth to be, and they set up their own biased "fact checkers" (lie perpetrators) to justify their censorship of those who disagree with them.

Don't you remember in 2020 when anybody, who mentioned the Hunter Biden laptop, got immediately banned from social media, justified on the basis of a letter written by 50 security "experts", who wrote that it was Russian disinformation, when all the time the FBI had it in their possession, and copies were offered to the MSM for inspection, and they all refused to look at it. Nobody is now disputing its existance and its contents are being openly discussed in the US Senate. Were you one of the guys agreeing that it was misinformation at the time, and do you still believe that? Were you in agreement with those guys getting cancelled from social media?

 

[Ghost1951]

the contents of any post can easily be rated for fact checking using automated AI.
If the EU and UK wanted to incorporate fact check into law, most of them can be automatically filtered out.

Ha ha ha ha - that's a laugh, and I am a big fan of AI and ChatGpt in particular.

ANYONE who has had a good play around with even the most excellent of all of the Large Language Models will soon have come up against their biggest and most laughable problem - they make stuff up and get facts wrong all the time.

I'm a huge fan of ChatGpt in particular having used Gemini and others. The most astonishing thing about it is that it REALLY does seem to understand what you are after, though of course it isn't understanding like a person's understanding, but if you ask a detailed precise question, it really does try and deal with that and nothing else (unlike the Google Search engine).

However - when you use it, you need to be very careful not to just accept what it returns as true.
You will soon find it telling you things that are easily researched and found to be false. I am sure the development of the technology will make this happen less and less, but it is a problem right now and probably for a while yet to come. They call it 'hallucination'. I have had conversations with the ChatGpt engine where it went completely bonkers and offered to email me further information. I asked it if it had my email address and it said it did and that it would send me data next Monday. It was in some psychotic state, I'm afraid and you can soon take it there by just conversing with it like you might do on here.

Nevertheless - the developments we have seen have been utterly amazing.It will be a huge benefit to us all if it is not turned into a high cost service. It is free for now, or at least there are free options available, but I doubt it will stay that way once they have fully developed it and they don't need the training service that users are now providing free. All the many billions the AI companies have spent will need to be recouped.


EDIT:

By the way. The very last thing we want or need is the EU fking about with the Internet and what we can say or what we can see. Same with UK government. If anyone here thinks that ANY politician in the UK should have his or her hands on what you can read or what you can say they need a carer assigned to them to take them out for an ice-cream.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

They already have that on Twitter. If anybody posts shite, the community correct them, as in this example:

https://x.com/lowles_nick/status/1819829746567381197

To be fair some in the Muslim community still insist it did happen https://x.com/lowles_nick/status/1819974924842275237

https://x.com/Taj_Ali1/status/1819824011557167415

And the police statement doesn't say it didn't happen, just that it hadn't been reported

https://www.cleveland.police.uk/news/cleveland/news/2024/august/statement-regarding-online-reports-of-attacks-in-middlesbrough/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Orlo