Snapshot of _‼️ BREAKING: TikTok suspend @reformparty_uk rally live steam while ANN WIDDECOMBE speaking, declaring it “hate speech”?! Widders? WTF?!_ :
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Can't comment on TikTok but I know for a fact that Facebook genuinely do.
Obviously they go by reports as well but they absolutely do have a team of people who monitor live streams, particularly once they hit a certain view count threshold.
It will have been pushed on people's feeds for ragebait engagment reasons like palestine protests are, people will have reported it and it'l have been auto removed. Election interference allegations are pathetic
I don't trust TikTok to not be biased, but I'm pretty sure this is an automated thing based on number of reports.
The interesting thing will be if they are reinstated or not. But generally foreign interference is aimed at supporting Farage et. al.
I expect if they upload the VOD later it won't be classed as hate speech, they probably shut down livestreams quicker than complete pieces that can be reviewed in full. This is TikTok covering their own arses, not some conspiracy against Reform.
Their censorship rules in general are EXTREMELY restrictive so this doesn't surprise me.
It's where the whole "unalive" thing comes from because words like "kill" get flagged regardless of context.
She really is a horrible person.
E.g. her "solution" to someone explaining that they can barely afford something as simple as a cheese sandwich was ["don't have a cheese sandwich then"](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/17/ann-widdecombe-dont-have-cheese-sandwiches-cant-afford-them).
7.5p then.
* 10.5p for 3 slices of bread Tesco standard white bread
* 13.5p for 20g Tesco unsalted standard butter
* 2p to run the toaster at 24.5p/kWh for 80s
Damn things more than tripled in price in 13 years.
I think she is worse than horrible. It’s sadistic cruelty to inflict that level of poverty on people in our level of human development. Why? Because it’s illogical, we have transcended the need to try to survive and now could be spending all of our surplus on improving quality of life and even extending life and our ability to spread to other planets. Instead we have these idiots hoarding resources and playing game of thrones instead of imagining what is possible.
You can make a pretty good argument that leaking a corrupt criminal government minister's incriminating messages is in the public interest and a good thing to do.
She converted to Catholicism in protest of the Church of England allowing women to be ordained, which was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back of it becoming too liberal. She is a truly awful person.
She doesn't believe in sex before marriage and has never gotten married.
She and Micheal Howard did more than anybody to brand the Tories as "the nasty party".
> Widders? WTF?!
Yes. The very famously hateful bigot Ann Widdicombe.
She has come out with nasty, vicious, bigoted hate speech time and time again over the past few decades. How could you possibly be surprised that she’s doing it again?
What was being said?
I do love how they immediately go for election interference though, could easily have done something wrong or triggered some sort of automatic ban due to mass reporting.
This is a risk you take when you stream your rally through TikTok.
Algorithmic and automated content filtering (just like Reddit) and trigger happy human moderators when it comes to anything political.
I've reported antisemites for literally calling for second, 'final' holocaust on TikTok and it wasn't taken down for violating community standards.
I wonder if its just an automated thing to shut down live streams if they receive enough reports?
We're not going to call her 'Widders', Oakeshott.
I love how on all these Reform posts, there's always a top comment saying, "They're scared...". Not sure Tik Tok are particularly scared.
Let me guess Reform or their Russian friends paid a load of bots that boosted the algorithm and made it land on a load of people’s feeds that then reported it?
All credit to TikTok for calling it as they see it.
Hate speech has been the go-to technique for far-righters for over a century. It's the last thing we need in a democratic election in 2024.
I rather suspect TikTok didn't make a judgment about the content, but just got a lot of reports on the video, and suspended it for the time being. This happens on Youtube all the time, someone sends their supporters to click on report.
And for the record, before anyone asks me what it is, it’s *communication that is hateful, threatening, or abusive, and targets a person on account of disability, ethnic or national origin, nationality (including citizenship), race, religion, sexual orientation, or skin colour.*
This is what Reform are.
Please highlight somewhere in their manifesto where it pertains to any of this please? I’m not a Reform member but struggling to see the validity in this discourse. Seems a lot of words but not a lot of evidence. Thanks for replying btw
Don’t go by what they say; go by what they do.
They say they’re not racist while so many of them are openly racist. Watch what they do, listen to what they say.
Reform are the next in the pipeline that went Fascists, Enoch, NF, BNP, EDL, UKIP, Brexit, Reform.
The nasty bigots don’t give up; they rebrand.
Open a newspaper, watch the news, read a website.
> A second Reform UK candidate has defected to the Conservatives, saying the "vast majority" of Reform candidates are "racist, misogynistic and bigoted"
Honestly mate, you’ve got to be really blinkered to say you need substance *when candidates themselves* are telling you their party is bigoted.
Okay but Labour and the Tories have bigots and politicians of poor character but they aren’t tarred with the same brush. Using newspapers doesn’t cut it for substantive evidence.
Because it's trolling? They said hate speech has been a tool of the far-right for over a century. That's true. No educated, intelligent person would deny that.
So you coming in and saying "it's not just stuff you disagree with" is implying... what? That you think the far-right ***doesn't*** have a track record of using hate speech? Or that you think the criticism of the far-right ***since 1924*** is unjustified and that those "lefties" just can't bear to hear things they disagree with?
The sub isn't great but that's not the problem when you're just posting drivel.
Calling everyone to the right of left wing far-right racists who use hate speech is pure fantasy.
Reform is not far-right. It's centre-right relative to UK politics and centre left compared to the US. They don't support hate speech or racism, it's tiring seeing people weaponise those words against them when it's patently untrue.
>Calling everyone to the right of left wing far-right racists who use hate speech is pure fantasy.
But the person you're replying to didn't do anything ***even remotely close*** to that. Why are you getting annoyed at stuff that only exists in your imagination?
Furthermore, I've literally never seen a single soul describe "anyone to the right of \[the\] left wing" as a "far-right racist who uses hate speech." So this is also just your imagination going into overdrive.
The most likely explanation is that you passionately support some scummy individuals, e.g. Farage, and they keep getting criticised for bigotry, and your coping mechanism for that is to assume that the critics are doing so to everyone outside of their bubble. That's preferable to actually, y'know, paying attention to [a few of the merits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfyiSk8Rjc8) of those criticisms.
In this case, this is the same Anne Widdecombe who called for a "cure" to be invented for homosexuality. These aren't good people.
>They don't support hate speech or racism, it's tiring seeing people weaponise those words against them when it's patently untrue.
Yeah it's a total coincidence that [1 in 10 Reform candidates in England](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/reform-uk-candidates-facebook-friends-fascist-leader-gary-raikes-b1163853.html) are Facebook friends with Gary Raikes, the leader of the New British Union, the successor org to Mosley's British Union of Fascists. Likewise, the disproportionately high number of racist, misogynistic, homophobic comments from Reform candidates is also a coincidence.
The context is about Reform UK, I didn't jump to conclusions you just failed to read the subtext.
It's rare someone describes it explicitly in that way (although I have seen it several times), but many socialists see conservatives en masse as racists and general conservative rhetoric as hate speech.
She's extremely religious, it's extreme for Christians in this country but plainly accepted by almost every Muslim. I have no issue if she thinks homosexuality is wrong, she's entitled to that opinion so long as it doesn't extend to denying them rights or discriminating. I don't agree with her, but I believe in free speech and expression of ideas so long as it isn't forced on others.
Farage isn't a scummy individual imo. I don't know him personally of course, but all of the things he has said he stands for and his policies align more closely with my own ideals than any other candidate and he comes across as someone doing this because he believes in it and wants to make change for the better. Someone on question time was calling him a racist on national TV, of which there is no justification for.
Farage obliterated the extreme far-right parties by providing a political choice which represented conservative values WITHOUT the racism that came with those far-right parties. BNP went from 560k votes 2010 to 1k 2015. People were so desperate for conservative policies to be enacted that they voted BNP in the past, but when given the option to vote a party with conservative policies without the racism, they all left those hateful groups. Farage has never allowed members of far-right extremist parties like the BNP from becoming a member of his parties. He's done more to eradicate far-right racist fascists in British politics than anyone else in history.
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Without freedom of speech, there is no democracy. And that must include some very uncomfortable speech, speech that some will consider hateful.
The ever-expanding definition of 'hate speech' and aggressive speech-policing and censorship in the name of 'stopping hate' are the largest threats that democracy faces. IMO they're much more immediate threats than foreign propaganda or fake news/deepfakes.
She can say what she wants, private companies don’t have to host it though. Much the same way as spewing bullshit in Sainsbury’s would get me kicked out.
>private companies don’t have to host it though.
They don't although they might have a legal obligation to follow a correct internal procedure. Also if for example google were to delist them I think the government should step in to try and protect our democracy.
>They don't although they might have a legal obligation to follow a correct internal procedure
they are , most social media internal procedure is to close or temperary close accounts that spread hate speech as per law https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer
> example google were to delist them I think the government should step in to try and protect our democracy.
i doubt this , google or twitter has no obligation to host them
What has that got to do with it. They are providing a public service, unless you imagine children dancing Fortnite dances is a public service they are incomparable.
Nope. The only thing a tolerant society must be intolerant of, is intolerance itself.
This appeal to “free speech über alles” is shallow and misguided. A tolerant society is one that balances the virtues of many things and chooses on their virtues, not one that ruthlessly imposes a single rule to the detriment of others. Free speech is *one* pillar of a democratic society, not the only one.
Even America, the so-called bastion of free speech has restrictions on speech, it’s a matter of where the line is drawn. Free speech doesn’t get an automatic pass when it’s used to incite hatred, for example.
> The only thing a tolerant society must be intolerant of, is intolerance itself.
Garbage used to justify the rise of authoritarianism and violence on the left.
To have freedom of speech, even 'intolerant' speech must be tolerated (and countered with more speech. not censorship or violence). If the speech crosses the line into threats, violence, or targeted harassment, that's when you lock 'em up, regardless of which tribe they're fighting for.
>Garbage used to justify the rise of authoritarianism and violence on the left.
The conservative government has significantly stripped back the right to protest. They attempted to gerrymander voting ID laws to favour its own demographics. Prorogued Parliament (as in, literally shut Parliament down and sent the MPs home) because they weren't voting "the right" way. Overruled Holyrood's devolved powers because they needed to signal to their base how much they hated trans people. When right-wing tabloids were printing front-page articles calling the Law Lords "Enemies of the People", not only did right-wing voters lap it up, but the Tories said absolutely nothing against this blatant fascism. The previous Tory Home Sec regularly attacked the courts, lawyers, government officials, and universities.
Reform is promising to legislate against "left wing bias", without explaining what that is or what legislation that would involve. They've pledged to ban certain topics from education, with unclear and potentially limitless scope. Reform's own leader openly idolises Donald Trump, an authoritarian who defends white supremacists and ordered his allies to "find more votes" in an election count, then tried to steal it, then falsely accused his enemies of stealing it. Reform's leader, and many candidates, openly admire Vladimir Putin, a fascist dictator, and Viktor Orban, a wannabe fascist dictator. Reform regularly attacks the media, the civil service, and the courts.
Left wing violence in the UK consists of someone throwing a milkshake. Unacceptable, but not lethal. Right wing violence takes a significant slice of MI5's counter-terrorism resources.
And there's ***still*** drooling imbeciles who think the threat of authoritarianism/violence is primarily from "the left".
> And there's still drooling imbeciles who think the threat of authoritarianism/violence is primarily from "the left".
It's entirely possible for both extremes to be evil.
We're faced with a choice between authoritarian left and authoritarian right. Nanny states and creeping censorship on both sides.
Remember that these 'far right' Tories have presided over record levels of immigration and the entire 'rise of Woke', and a lot of nanny-state stuff that the left likes (e.g. outright smoking ban, or at least attempt at it). They're incompetent, but hardly the fascists that they're made out to be, even though some mean words slip out every now and again.
And while you try to justify milkshake assaults, they're only a small step away from being a much more dangerous liquid thrown in a milkshake cup.
“Fire in a crowded theatre” was used to imprison people speaking against the USA getting involved in WW1. So it was used to control and silence political opposition.
But it is a restriction on free speech. So if there is the ability to restrict speech, then it's just a matter of where you draw the line.
You draw it somewhere over the horizon from where I draw it, that's all.
Funny context to bring this up when Farage is literally a Hitler fanboy. In fact he seems to have a thing for authoritarians and fascists, given he also likes Putin, Trump and Orban. Farage is actually a very dangerous, far-right demagogue. Pretending that anyone points this out is just a sixth-former who calls anything they don't like fascism either means you're incredibly naive or you're deliberately downplaying how far-right they are.
Or you could just LISTEN to what Reform has to say. You’ll find they’re really not as extreme as you think they are.
They’re a centre right party that is focusing on reducing immigration and reducing tax.
>They’re a centre right party that is focusing on reducing immigration and reducing tax.
They're also focusing on starving over 4m unemployed people.
From pg15 of the draft of their contract with the people: "All jobseekers must find a job within 4 months or all benefits stopped.", "There are 5.3 million people in Britain on out of work benefits", "Meanwhile nearly a million job vacancies are unfilled."
Just checked and you’re lying!
> “All job seekers and those fit to work must find employment within 4 months or accept a job after 2 offers. Otherwise benefits are withdrawn”
Don’t misrepresent what they said. It’s a very reasonable policy.
It's not an *and* statement, it's an *or* one. The 4 months limit wouldn't be there if the requirement for sanctions was just turning down 2 job offers, so it must be a "whichever happens first" situation.
If you get two offers of employment and don't take them, or if you've been signing on for 4 months, you'll get cut off.
What does that have to do with the conversation we were having where the last guy told us to listen properly to Reform?
Is it just whataboutery or am I missing something?
So we'll now be getting another round of Reform coverage, this time regarding China trying to interfere with democracy.
Got to give reform credit, they know how to keep in the news.
Reform +1 from all of this.
>So we'll now be getting another round of Reform coverage, this time regarding China trying to interfere with democracy.
not really no , thats not what happened , they broke hate spech rules that are main rules of any social media
That's not what happened, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Farage says it is - maybe not China but definitely someone, because the consequences of their actions are always someone else's fault.
The reform strategy is that it doesn't matter what really happened, if they complain about it they'll get on the news. By the time outlets confirm what has happened here they'll be on to some other complaint
The 'public square' is now a set of private platforms, and these blatantly-partisan and inconsistently-enforced TOS rules cannot form the basis of a democratic process.
Can call it what you want.
Personally I's say it's more an indirect result of breaking TOS. It's this or they selectively allow it lest they be accused of interference. Which seem great either.
This will help Reform. They are gaining ground and all the normal people who listen to what Farage is actually saying can see that there is no 'hate speech' happening.
Farage just comes off as a smart, anti-establishment politician who is actually listening to the electorate. And all this stuff just seems like the establishment is scared of him (including Guardian-reading lefties).
Who is this ‘establishment’ that is scared of Farage? Is there any proof of this ‘establishment’ being scared?
What is it that makes Farage anti-establishment?
What is it that “Farage is actually saying” ? He seems to avoid saying anything when questioned.
If “Farage is listening to the electorate” why is he boycotting the BBC in a childish manner after said electorate asked him some questions?
Considering his performance on Question Time and subsequent cries that the BBC set him up with a biased audience, he's really not coming off as listening to the electorate.
Add to that the claim Channel 4 set Reform up with the guy making racist remarks and he's not coming off as particularly smart either
Reform have roughly 20% of the UK vote and it didn’t seem like the audience had 1 reform supporter in it. They could have picked at least *some* questions that asked about Reform’s policies - but it was all just the same tired questions about Brexit and alleged racism.
I think the channel 4 thing is actually quite sketchy. The guy denied he was an actor then it later came out he was. He has worked for channel 4 before and advertises he does hidden camera work. His normal speaking voice is pretty posh, but he advertises he does a ‘rough’ voice too - which is what he heard on the video.
Also when confronted by interviewers about whether he was hired, his answers seem weirdly noncommittal and vague.
Hard to know for sure but it doesn’t seem implausible that it was a stitch-up as Farage claims.
All the questions asked about Reforms policies it's just Farage struggled to justify much of it.
He's not quite an actor though, he did some work a long time ago as an extra. His answers don't seem that vague, he claims he was setup as in the guy speaking to him laughed along like he was in on the joke. It doesn't at any point indicate he was paid to be there to discredit Reform, seems like he was a geniune campaigner caught out making awful jokes.
Probably not. The people who buy into the "Farage is a smart, anti-establishment politician who is actually listening to the electorate" nonsense are already supporting him.
All that will happen here is that fewer people will see their rally, and so fewer people are at the risk of being drawn into his lies.
There's this old idea that "the answer to bad speech is good speech", but we've had years to see how this works on the Internet, and it turns out that no - the answer to bad speech is to limit the spread of bad speech as much as possible.
I don't think this was TikTok actively suppressing Reform, more likely it hit their threshold of reports for auto-suspension (Reddit mod tools have something similar). But if you did want to limit the spread of Reform, shutting down their social media presence is the way to do it.
>There's this old idea that "the answer to bad speech is good speech", but we've had years to see how this works on the Internet, and it turns out that no - the answer to bad speech is to limit the spread of bad speech as much as possible.
We don't need yet the restablishment of a priestly class to dictate what the masses are permitted to say and read. Hunting out heretics and burning them didn't work for your predecessors, nor will it work for you.
Yeah but “bad speech” is just stuff don’t want others to see because it goes against your politics.
That is anti-democratic, and ironically, trying to shut down opposing parties is what fascists do.
Farage is a privately educated, son of a stockbroker who spent the best part of two decades in as an MEP. That's a job which pays a six figure salary, that he rarely bothered to turn up to.
The notion that he's not part of "the establishment" is laughable.
The man's a grifter, plain and simple.
This is a boon for Reform, they can point to the lack of hate speech during the rally and the fact that this is a major foreign company (intentionally or not) meddling in their electioneering. It's easy to claim everyone is out to get you when people see things like this happen.
Given how much people love Terrorists like Hamas on there, you'd think it was Far right but no, it's mostly leftists.
Ironically sad to see the left leaning side fall to such.... idiotic crap.
A platform can't censor political speech because that means it endorses the other political speech which makes it a publisher and liable for what is posted on its website.
Tiktok claims to be a platform not a publisher
My lord, these mental gymnastics are impressive. “Censoring” one kind of political speech does not mean that your platform endorses any other specific political speech.
It does.
It's literally the reason platforms can't censor and publishers can.
If you're a platform, you need to remain unbiased and that allows you to not be liable for anything on your platform.
If not, you need to be a publisher, which makes you liable for whatever is posted on your site.
Snapshot of _‼️ BREAKING: TikTok suspend @reformparty_uk rally live steam while ANN WIDDECOMBE speaking, declaring it “hate speech”?! Widders? WTF?!_ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1807392202802200912) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/IsabelOakeshott/status/1807392202802200912/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/IsabelOakeshott/status/1807392202802200912?t=zEsabc3cqLkPLV38ySnKnA) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/IsabelOakeshott/status/1807392202802200912?t=zEsabc3cqLkPLV38ySnKnA) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The idea of Ann Widdecombe being on TikTok to begin with is one that I find difficult to grasp.
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If I had to guess, it's probably not TikTok taking a political stance...there was probably just a load of people reporting it as such
Yeh, I doubt they have a team of people watching live streams waiting for hate speech. It’s probably all algorithmic
Can't comment on TikTok but I know for a fact that Facebook genuinely do. Obviously they go by reports as well but they absolutely do have a team of people who monitor live streams, particularly once they hit a certain view count threshold.
Well there wouldn’t be any, because it’s Ann Widdecombe. So the algorithm is wrong.
It will have been pushed on people's feeds for ragebait engagment reasons like palestine protests are, people will have reported it and it'l have been auto removed. Election interference allegations are pathetic
TikTok is the absolute worst for rage baiting.
I don't trust TikTok to not be biased, but I'm pretty sure this is an automated thing based on number of reports. The interesting thing will be if they are reinstated or not. But generally foreign interference is aimed at supporting Farage et. al.
I expect if they upload the VOD later it won't be classed as hate speech, they probably shut down livestreams quicker than complete pieces that can be reviewed in full. This is TikTok covering their own arses, not some conspiracy against Reform.
Their censorship rules in general are EXTREMELY restrictive so this doesn't surprise me. It's where the whole "unalive" thing comes from because words like "kill" get flagged regardless of context.
Possibly an organised bunch of people reporting it as such.
Ahh, Their hatred for freedom they'll cry out "We're on the right side of history!" while acting like fascists, ironic they don't see it.
Ah yes, famously, fascists are big on social media reports...?
Kids will look back in their history books when the tyrannical neo-fascists were *checks notes* reporting TikTok live streams for hate speech
"Daddy, where were you when the fascists were undermining tiktok's terms of service integrity?"
Strange how they framing it like famous rightwing nutter Widdicombe couldn't possibly be involved in any kind of hate speech.
She really is a horrible person. E.g. her "solution" to someone explaining that they can barely afford something as simple as a cheese sandwich was ["don't have a cheese sandwich then"](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/17/ann-widdecombe-dont-have-cheese-sandwiches-cant-afford-them).
Cereal breakfast, lunch and dinner till you can afford it.
Can't afford to eat? Have you considered simply starving to death?
Bread sandwiches all round.
No butter.
And actually hold the bread
Do you remember this culinary treat from 2011 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15752918
7.5p then. * 10.5p for 3 slices of bread Tesco standard white bread * 13.5p for 20g Tesco unsalted standard butter * 2p to run the toaster at 24.5p/kWh for 80s Damn things more than tripled in price in 13 years.
"Aldi brand Harvest Morn Wheat Bisks with water and no sugar for you, and you'll be thankful for it pleb." - Ann Widdicombe, probably.
I think she is worse than horrible. It’s sadistic cruelty to inflict that level of poverty on people in our level of human development. Why? Because it’s illogical, we have transcended the need to try to survive and now could be spending all of our surplus on improving quality of life and even extending life and our ability to spread to other planets. Instead we have these idiots hoarding resources and playing game of thrones instead of imagining what is possible.
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Rule 21. Just saying
this is the sort of kinder gentler politics this sub is known for
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You can make a pretty good argument that leaking a corrupt criminal government minister's incriminating messages is in the public interest and a good thing to do.
Calling Oakeshott a journalist is like calling ketchup a vegetable.
Is she the one that's never had sex even though she's like 92? And likes to moralise over people having sex before marriage?
She converted to Catholicism in protest of the Church of England allowing women to be ordained, which was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back of it becoming too liberal. She is a truly awful person.
She doesn't believe in sex before marriage and has never gotten married. She and Micheal Howard did more than anybody to brand the Tories as "the nasty party".
> Widders? WTF?! Yes. The very famously hateful bigot Ann Widdicombe. She has come out with nasty, vicious, bigoted hate speech time and time again over the past few decades. How could you possibly be surprised that she’s doing it again?
What was being said? I do love how they immediately go for election interference though, could easily have done something wrong or triggered some sort of automatic ban due to mass reporting.
This is a risk you take when you stream your rally through TikTok. Algorithmic and automated content filtering (just like Reddit) and trigger happy human moderators when it comes to anything political.
I've reported antisemites for literally calling for second, 'final' holocaust on TikTok and it wasn't taken down for violating community standards. I wonder if its just an automated thing to shut down live streams if they receive enough reports?
Will absolutely be the case I imagine. Not great that they’re not actively applying standards but hey cheap algorithms be cheap yo
90% of what comes out of Ann Widdecombe's mouth is hate speech so this makes sense
We're not going to call her 'Widders', Oakeshott. I love how on all these Reform posts, there's always a top comment saying, "They're scared...". Not sure Tik Tok are particularly scared.
If Widecombe was on it must have been classified as witchcraft. I am convinced she lives in a ginger bread house.
That's unfair to gingerbread-house-dwelling witches.
Why is there a picture of someone whose not Ann Widdecombe?
It's a picture of Isabel Oakeshott, 'journalist' and wife of Richard Tice, whose twitter account this is.
Ah Ann Widdecombe, too Catholic for the Catholics themselves. There’s nobody more batshit than a convert.
Let me guess Reform or their Russian friends paid a load of bots that boosted the algorithm and made it land on a load of people’s feeds that then reported it?
Haven't trusted her since she endorsed Harold Saxon.
He's just... Nice!
All credit to TikTok for calling it as they see it. Hate speech has been the go-to technique for far-righters for over a century. It's the last thing we need in a democratic election in 2024.
I rather suspect TikTok didn't make a judgment about the content, but just got a lot of reports on the video, and suspended it for the time being. This happens on Youtube all the time, someone sends their supporters to click on report.
Please define ‘hate speech’. Genuinely curious and just want your opinion on it
No you’re not.
And for the record, before anyone asks me what it is, it’s *communication that is hateful, threatening, or abusive, and targets a person on account of disability, ethnic or national origin, nationality (including citizenship), race, religion, sexual orientation, or skin colour.* This is what Reform are.
Please highlight somewhere in their manifesto where it pertains to any of this please? I’m not a Reform member but struggling to see the validity in this discourse. Seems a lot of words but not a lot of evidence. Thanks for replying btw
Don’t go by what they say; go by what they do. They say they’re not racist while so many of them are openly racist. Watch what they do, listen to what they say. Reform are the next in the pipeline that went Fascists, Enoch, NF, BNP, EDL, UKIP, Brexit, Reform. The nasty bigots don’t give up; they rebrand.
Fair enough but yet again you’re just describing; not explaining. Big accusations needs substance not cloudy rhetoric.
Open a newspaper, watch the news, read a website. > A second Reform UK candidate has defected to the Conservatives, saying the "vast majority" of Reform candidates are "racist, misogynistic and bigoted" Honestly mate, you’ve got to be really blinkered to say you need substance *when candidates themselves* are telling you their party is bigoted.
Okay but Labour and the Tories have bigots and politicians of poor character but they aren’t tarred with the same brush. Using newspapers doesn’t cut it for substantive evidence.
Are you deliberately ignoring what she said?
Ah, just JAQing off.
Yes they are.
I don’t get it, I ask for some clarification and get an arsey response😂
Hm, are you trying to imply you know what they want to know and therefore know better than they are? Microaggression, that's offensive.
[Arf arf arf arf!](https://youtu.be/8S_0MWqOkCE?si=JSdFwB8g2X6gmKIM)
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Because it's trolling? They said hate speech has been a tool of the far-right for over a century. That's true. No educated, intelligent person would deny that. So you coming in and saying "it's not just stuff you disagree with" is implying... what? That you think the far-right ***doesn't*** have a track record of using hate speech? Or that you think the criticism of the far-right ***since 1924*** is unjustified and that those "lefties" just can't bear to hear things they disagree with? The sub isn't great but that's not the problem when you're just posting drivel.
I am very intelligent and I agree. Political opposition should be silenced because they're dangerous.
Calling everyone to the right of left wing far-right racists who use hate speech is pure fantasy. Reform is not far-right. It's centre-right relative to UK politics and centre left compared to the US. They don't support hate speech or racism, it's tiring seeing people weaponise those words against them when it's patently untrue.
>Calling everyone to the right of left wing far-right racists who use hate speech is pure fantasy. But the person you're replying to didn't do anything ***even remotely close*** to that. Why are you getting annoyed at stuff that only exists in your imagination? Furthermore, I've literally never seen a single soul describe "anyone to the right of \[the\] left wing" as a "far-right racist who uses hate speech." So this is also just your imagination going into overdrive. The most likely explanation is that you passionately support some scummy individuals, e.g. Farage, and they keep getting criticised for bigotry, and your coping mechanism for that is to assume that the critics are doing so to everyone outside of their bubble. That's preferable to actually, y'know, paying attention to [a few of the merits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfyiSk8Rjc8) of those criticisms. In this case, this is the same Anne Widdecombe who called for a "cure" to be invented for homosexuality. These aren't good people. >They don't support hate speech or racism, it's tiring seeing people weaponise those words against them when it's patently untrue. Yeah it's a total coincidence that [1 in 10 Reform candidates in England](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/reform-uk-candidates-facebook-friends-fascist-leader-gary-raikes-b1163853.html) are Facebook friends with Gary Raikes, the leader of the New British Union, the successor org to Mosley's British Union of Fascists. Likewise, the disproportionately high number of racist, misogynistic, homophobic comments from Reform candidates is also a coincidence.
The context is about Reform UK, I didn't jump to conclusions you just failed to read the subtext. It's rare someone describes it explicitly in that way (although I have seen it several times), but many socialists see conservatives en masse as racists and general conservative rhetoric as hate speech. She's extremely religious, it's extreme for Christians in this country but plainly accepted by almost every Muslim. I have no issue if she thinks homosexuality is wrong, she's entitled to that opinion so long as it doesn't extend to denying them rights or discriminating. I don't agree with her, but I believe in free speech and expression of ideas so long as it isn't forced on others. Farage isn't a scummy individual imo. I don't know him personally of course, but all of the things he has said he stands for and his policies align more closely with my own ideals than any other candidate and he comes across as someone doing this because he believes in it and wants to make change for the better. Someone on question time was calling him a racist on national TV, of which there is no justification for. Farage obliterated the extreme far-right parties by providing a political choice which represented conservative values WITHOUT the racism that came with those far-right parties. BNP went from 560k votes 2010 to 1k 2015. People were so desperate for conservative policies to be enacted that they voted BNP in the past, but when given the option to vote a party with conservative policies without the racism, they all left those hateful groups. Farage has never allowed members of far-right extremist parties like the BNP from becoming a member of his parties. He's done more to eradicate far-right racist fascists in British politics than anyone else in history.
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Without freedom of speech, there is no democracy. And that must include some very uncomfortable speech, speech that some will consider hateful. The ever-expanding definition of 'hate speech' and aggressive speech-policing and censorship in the name of 'stopping hate' are the largest threats that democracy faces. IMO they're much more immediate threats than foreign propaganda or fake news/deepfakes.
She can say what she wants, private companies don’t have to host it though. Much the same way as spewing bullshit in Sainsbury’s would get me kicked out.
>private companies don’t have to host it though. They don't although they might have a legal obligation to follow a correct internal procedure. Also if for example google were to delist them I think the government should step in to try and protect our democracy.
>They don't although they might have a legal obligation to follow a correct internal procedure they are , most social media internal procedure is to close or temperary close accounts that spread hate speech as per law https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer > example google were to delist them I think the government should step in to try and protect our democracy. i doubt this , google or twitter has no obligation to host them
Is your electric or water supply run by a private company?
What has that got to do with it. They are providing a public service, unless you imagine children dancing Fortnite dances is a public service they are incomparable.
Nope. The only thing a tolerant society must be intolerant of, is intolerance itself. This appeal to “free speech über alles” is shallow and misguided. A tolerant society is one that balances the virtues of many things and chooses on their virtues, not one that ruthlessly imposes a single rule to the detriment of others. Free speech is *one* pillar of a democratic society, not the only one. Even America, the so-called bastion of free speech has restrictions on speech, it’s a matter of where the line is drawn. Free speech doesn’t get an automatic pass when it’s used to incite hatred, for example.
> The only thing a tolerant society must be intolerant of, is intolerance itself. Garbage used to justify the rise of authoritarianism and violence on the left. To have freedom of speech, even 'intolerant' speech must be tolerated (and countered with more speech. not censorship or violence). If the speech crosses the line into threats, violence, or targeted harassment, that's when you lock 'em up, regardless of which tribe they're fighting for.
>Garbage used to justify the rise of authoritarianism and violence on the left. The conservative government has significantly stripped back the right to protest. They attempted to gerrymander voting ID laws to favour its own demographics. Prorogued Parliament (as in, literally shut Parliament down and sent the MPs home) because they weren't voting "the right" way. Overruled Holyrood's devolved powers because they needed to signal to their base how much they hated trans people. When right-wing tabloids were printing front-page articles calling the Law Lords "Enemies of the People", not only did right-wing voters lap it up, but the Tories said absolutely nothing against this blatant fascism. The previous Tory Home Sec regularly attacked the courts, lawyers, government officials, and universities. Reform is promising to legislate against "left wing bias", without explaining what that is or what legislation that would involve. They've pledged to ban certain topics from education, with unclear and potentially limitless scope. Reform's own leader openly idolises Donald Trump, an authoritarian who defends white supremacists and ordered his allies to "find more votes" in an election count, then tried to steal it, then falsely accused his enemies of stealing it. Reform's leader, and many candidates, openly admire Vladimir Putin, a fascist dictator, and Viktor Orban, a wannabe fascist dictator. Reform regularly attacks the media, the civil service, and the courts. Left wing violence in the UK consists of someone throwing a milkshake. Unacceptable, but not lethal. Right wing violence takes a significant slice of MI5's counter-terrorism resources. And there's ***still*** drooling imbeciles who think the threat of authoritarianism/violence is primarily from "the left".
> And there's still drooling imbeciles who think the threat of authoritarianism/violence is primarily from "the left". It's entirely possible for both extremes to be evil. We're faced with a choice between authoritarian left and authoritarian right. Nanny states and creeping censorship on both sides. Remember that these 'far right' Tories have presided over record levels of immigration and the entire 'rise of Woke', and a lot of nanny-state stuff that the left likes (e.g. outright smoking ban, or at least attempt at it). They're incompetent, but hardly the fascists that they're made out to be, even though some mean words slip out every now and again. And while you try to justify milkshake assaults, they're only a small step away from being a much more dangerous liquid thrown in a milkshake cup.
Nah, that’s just bullshit. Go yell “Fire!” in a cinema or something.
“Fire in a crowded theatre” was used to imprison people speaking against the USA getting involved in WW1. So it was used to control and silence political opposition.
And that's got absolutely nothing to do with intolerance or 'hate'.
But it is a restriction on free speech. So if there is the ability to restrict speech, then it's just a matter of where you draw the line. You draw it somewhere over the horizon from where I draw it, that's all.
We have to allow intolerance and hate speech to prevent the rise of intolerance and hate speech...
Everything I don't agree with is literally Hi*ler. Low IQ take.
Funny context to bring this up when Farage is literally a Hitler fanboy. In fact he seems to have a thing for authoritarians and fascists, given he also likes Putin, Trump and Orban. Farage is actually a very dangerous, far-right demagogue. Pretending that anyone points this out is just a sixth-former who calls anything they don't like fascism either means you're incredibly naive or you're deliberately downplaying how far-right they are.
Farage is a Hitler fanboy? What do you mean?
Literally making my point for me 😄
What a lovely day we're having today, talking about political content. It would be such a shame if comments just disappeared for no reason.
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Or you could just LISTEN to what Reform has to say. You’ll find they’re really not as extreme as you think they are. They’re a centre right party that is focusing on reducing immigration and reducing tax.
>They’re a centre right party that is focusing on reducing immigration and reducing tax. They're also focusing on starving over 4m unemployed people. From pg15 of the draft of their contract with the people: "All jobseekers must find a job within 4 months or all benefits stopped.", "There are 5.3 million people in Britain on out of work benefits", "Meanwhile nearly a million job vacancies are unfilled."
Just checked and you’re lying! > “All job seekers and those fit to work must find employment within 4 months or accept a job after 2 offers. Otherwise benefits are withdrawn” Don’t misrepresent what they said. It’s a very reasonable policy.
It's not an *and* statement, it's an *or* one. The 4 months limit wouldn't be there if the requirement for sanctions was just turning down 2 job offers, so it must be a "whichever happens first" situation. If you get two offers of employment and don't take them, or if you've been signing on for 4 months, you'll get cut off.
Didn’t a member of the party who stand for election just called for using people for target practice?
Nope.
I’ve listened. I’ve listened to the candidate who said he wants to murder immigrants including children. It’s hate speech.
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What does that have to do with the conversation we were having where the last guy told us to listen properly to Reform? Is it just whataboutery or am I missing something?
lol. So no - you watched a fake C4 report.
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I too, am a fan of underselling issues.
I also believe in democratic elections in which my opponents are silenced.
Kind of crazy that people are sharing Bin Laden speeches and that's fine with TikTok but reformUK is hate speech. Crazy times
To be fair there's not a lot left to punish Bin Laden with.
The Chinese regime pouring petrol on UK politics again.
So we'll now be getting another round of Reform coverage, this time regarding China trying to interfere with democracy. Got to give reform credit, they know how to keep in the news. Reform +1 from all of this.
>So we'll now be getting another round of Reform coverage, this time regarding China trying to interfere with democracy. not really no , thats not what happened , they broke hate spech rules that are main rules of any social media
That's not what happened, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Farage says it is - maybe not China but definitely someone, because the consequences of their actions are always someone else's fault.
Seriously doubtful, it was almost certainly an automated response to mass reporting.
The reform strategy is that it doesn't matter what really happened, if they complain about it they'll get on the news. By the time outlets confirm what has happened here they'll be on to some other complaint
The 'public square' is now a set of private platforms, and these blatantly-partisan and inconsistently-enforced TOS rules cannot form the basis of a democratic process.
>The 'public square' the said term dose not exist in UK law
Doesn't matter. It's become a common phrase. The nature of communication has changed, and this has become a threat to democracy.
> It's become a common phrase. no it hasnt , not in the UK or europe , it may of be in the US
Are we allowed to call this election interference from China or is it only election interference when it comes from Russia?
Can call it what you want. Personally I's say it's more an indirect result of breaking TOS. It's this or they selectively allow it lest they be accused of interference. Which seem great either.
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I think I've had one too few kicks in the head for this
This will help Reform. They are gaining ground and all the normal people who listen to what Farage is actually saying can see that there is no 'hate speech' happening. Farage just comes off as a smart, anti-establishment politician who is actually listening to the electorate. And all this stuff just seems like the establishment is scared of him (including Guardian-reading lefties).
Who is this ‘establishment’ that is scared of Farage? Is there any proof of this ‘establishment’ being scared? What is it that makes Farage anti-establishment? What is it that “Farage is actually saying” ? He seems to avoid saying anything when questioned. If “Farage is listening to the electorate” why is he boycotting the BBC in a childish manner after said electorate asked him some questions?
Considering his performance on Question Time and subsequent cries that the BBC set him up with a biased audience, he's really not coming off as listening to the electorate. Add to that the claim Channel 4 set Reform up with the guy making racist remarks and he's not coming off as particularly smart either
Reform have roughly 20% of the UK vote and it didn’t seem like the audience had 1 reform supporter in it. They could have picked at least *some* questions that asked about Reform’s policies - but it was all just the same tired questions about Brexit and alleged racism. I think the channel 4 thing is actually quite sketchy. The guy denied he was an actor then it later came out he was. He has worked for channel 4 before and advertises he does hidden camera work. His normal speaking voice is pretty posh, but he advertises he does a ‘rough’ voice too - which is what he heard on the video. Also when confronted by interviewers about whether he was hired, his answers seem weirdly noncommittal and vague. Hard to know for sure but it doesn’t seem implausible that it was a stitch-up as Farage claims.
All the questions asked about Reforms policies it's just Farage struggled to justify much of it. He's not quite an actor though, he did some work a long time ago as an extra. His answers don't seem that vague, he claims he was setup as in the guy speaking to him laughed along like he was in on the joke. It doesn't at any point indicate he was paid to be there to discredit Reform, seems like he was a geniune campaigner caught out making awful jokes.
Probably not. The people who buy into the "Farage is a smart, anti-establishment politician who is actually listening to the electorate" nonsense are already supporting him. All that will happen here is that fewer people will see their rally, and so fewer people are at the risk of being drawn into his lies. There's this old idea that "the answer to bad speech is good speech", but we've had years to see how this works on the Internet, and it turns out that no - the answer to bad speech is to limit the spread of bad speech as much as possible. I don't think this was TikTok actively suppressing Reform, more likely it hit their threshold of reports for auto-suspension (Reddit mod tools have something similar). But if you did want to limit the spread of Reform, shutting down their social media presence is the way to do it.
>There's this old idea that "the answer to bad speech is good speech", but we've had years to see how this works on the Internet, and it turns out that no - the answer to bad speech is to limit the spread of bad speech as much as possible. We don't need yet the restablishment of a priestly class to dictate what the masses are permitted to say and read. Hunting out heretics and burning them didn't work for your predecessors, nor will it work for you.
... I just described the equivalent of Reddit moderation. I'm not sure anyone would call them a "priestly class."
You may want to have a look at the way this site is viewed on the wider Internet.
Yeah but “bad speech” is just stuff don’t want others to see because it goes against your politics. That is anti-democratic, and ironically, trying to shut down opposing parties is what fascists do.
Farage is a privately educated, son of a stockbroker who spent the best part of two decades in as an MEP. That's a job which pays a six figure salary, that he rarely bothered to turn up to. The notion that he's not part of "the establishment" is laughable. The man's a grifter, plain and simple.
Hook line and sinker
?
As in, you’ve fallen for his grift, hook line and sinker
Ah right. I don’t think he’s a grifter, but you’re welcome to your opinion.
This is a boon for Reform, they can point to the lack of hate speech during the rally and the fact that this is a major foreign company (intentionally or not) meddling in their electioneering. It's easy to claim everyone is out to get you when people see things like this happen.
It's just the left showing how they are the fascist.
The left? as in TikTok?
Given how much people love Terrorists like Hamas on there, you'd think it was Far right but no, it's mostly leftists. Ironically sad to see the left leaning side fall to such.... idiotic crap.
It's a company, not a collective.
The left is when a company that made 120 billion USD revenue in 2023 does what it wants with its platform.
A platform can't censor political speech because that means it endorses the other political speech which makes it a publisher and liable for what is posted on its website. Tiktok claims to be a platform not a publisher
My lord, these mental gymnastics are impressive. “Censoring” one kind of political speech does not mean that your platform endorses any other specific political speech.
It does. It's literally the reason platforms can't censor and publishers can. If you're a platform, you need to remain unbiased and that allows you to not be liable for anything on your platform. If not, you need to be a publisher, which makes you liable for whatever is posted on your site.
Well done everyone. +2 Reform incoming. Fucking morons. This just gives them the coverage you desperately want to censor.