Meet The Peo­ple Around The World On Tri­al For A Tweet 

“Think before you post!”
So reads the warn­ing issued by the UK gov­ern­ment, adver­tis­ing a far-reach­ing crack­down on expres­sion on Twit­ter amidst volatile unrest break­ing out across Eng­land.
The Direc­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions took to Sky News to cau­tion the nation that he had police offi­cers ded­i­cat­ed to “scour­ing social media” to “look for this mate­r­i­al [incite­ment to racial hatred], and then fol­low up with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, arrests, and so on and so forth.” Already, two per­pe­tra­tors have been charged and sen­tenced for their tweets – both guilty of bla­tant­ly incit­ing vio­lence, call­ing on riot­ers to burn down a hotel hous­ing migrants.
Incite­ment to vio­lence has long been ille­gal, and should be whol­ly reject­ed even by ardent free speech abso­lutists.
But the new­found zeal of the gov­ern­ment for pros­e­cut­ing online expres­sion could soon slide into the restric­tion, or even crim­i­nal­iza­tion, of peace­ful speech.
Keir Starmer has indi­cat­ed an inten­tion to beef up the Online Safe­ty Act, set to go into force in ear­ly 2025. The …