[00:00:04] Hi, my name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the dispatches, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
[00:00:22] Hi everybody. Welcome along to the Friday Freebie edition of the Dispatches podcast. My name is Brendan Malone. It is great to be back with you again in today's topic of conversation, should we be jailing people for Facebook posts? Before I get into any of that though, just a quick reminder that if you want a daily dose of the dispatches, that's an episode every single day of the week, Monday through Friday, then go to patreon.com leftfootmedia and become a five dollar monthly patron. The link is in today's show notes and a huge thank you to all of our patrons. It's thanks to you that today's episode is made possible. Right, let's jump into this topic, I think a pressing topic in light of what is actually going on in the UK, and I'm going to read to you now from an article about an incident that has just happened in the last couple of days in the United Kingdom. And then I will share my thoughts about all of this. A judge has jailed a keyboard warrior, quote unquote, for posting an online message saying, blow the mosque up with the adults in ithood during the riots. Now already, there's a little bit of an issue here, because this very first opening statement in this article that was published in the mainstream media hasn't actually given the full context. Like, it hasn't given the full message what she actually posted and the context around it. So if you read just that sentence, this sounds an awful lot like someone who is actually trying to incite or who is giving specific instructions to someone to do an act. But that's not actually what's going on here. As you'll hear when you keep reading the article, Chester Crown Court heard that Julie Sweeney, aged 53, lived a quiet, sheltered life before sending the comments to her local community Facebook group in Kidsgrove, jailing her for 15 months. That's one. Five months. The judge told her that even people like you need to go to prison, which even that statement in and of itself is extremely troubling. Like, in other words, what he's saying here is even seemingly well adjusted, normal, contributing members of the community who are not reprobates, who are not causing social harm, even people like you actually need to go to prison. That is a shocking admission in and of itself. The fact that he's even making that statement says a lot about what's actually going on here, Sara Badrawee prosecutor told the court one of the group's 5100 members, that's 5100 members, became uneasy at a number of comments posted on the site in the wake of widespread violent disorder following the killing of three young girls in Southport on the 29 June. Following a post that showed white and asian people involved in the cleanup from from the aftermath of the Southport disorder, Sweeney posted the following comment. It's absolutely ridiculous. Don't protect the mosques, blow the mosques up with the adults in it. The prosecutor said the concerned member that's one person from that group, found the post offensive. Police were alerted about the post, which was later deleted. When arrested, Sweeney told officers, I'm not being rude, but there are a lot of people saying it. She said she posted the comment in anger and had no intention to put people in fear and conceded it was unacceptable and that she would be deleting her entire Facebook account. John Keane, her defence lawyer, said she accepts it was stupid. This was a single comment on a single day. She lives a quiet, sheltered life in Cheshire and has not troubled the courts in her long life. Her character references show she lives a kind and compassionate lifestyle. She has been the primary carer for her husband since 2015. This conduct is firmly out of character for her and she has shown genuine remorse. This offence was committed on her computer in the safety of her own home and unfortunately, pressing send for her is going to have dire consequences when sentencing Sweeney, Judge Stephen Everett, the recorder of Chester, said you should have been looking at the news and media with horror like every right minded person. Instead, you chose to take part in stirring up hatred. You were part of a Facebook account which had 5100 members. You had a big audience. You threatened a mosque, wherever it was, it truly was a terrible threat. So called keyboard warriors like you must learn to take responsibility for your disgusting and inflammatory language. The judge said the timing of the comment was extremely important given the events of recent weeks, he added. You had an impressionable audience and potentially a vulnerable audience. Your comment was recklessly made rather than intentionally, but appropriate punishment can only be achieved by immediate custody, in other words, sending her to jail. He said he took into account Sweeney's previous good character and a heart rending letter from her husband, but continued, in circumstances such as these, even people like you need to go to prison because a message must go out that if you do these terrible acts, the court will say to you, you must go to prison. I'm afraid that's what I have to say to you today. Sweeney, who appeared in court via video link from HMP style, replied. Thank you, your honour. A spokesman for Cheshire Constabulary said, since the start of the recent disorder in other areas of the UK, we have been clear that we will not tolerate this kind of behaviour in Cheshire, including those who post abusive and threatening messages online. People may think that posting hateful messages on social media instead of engaging in this sort of behaviour in person, offers them some sort of anonymity, but this could not be further from the truth. As this case demonstrates, there is nowhere to hide. If you choose to engage in this behavior, whether in person or online, we will find you and you will be held responsible. So here are the key facts of this case. Following a Facebook post in a group that showed white and asian people cleaning up from the aftermath of the recent protests in the United Kingdom, this lady posted the following comment. It's absolutely ridiculous. Don't protect the mosques, blow the mosques up with the adults in it. And then one of the members of this 5100 member Facebook group complained.
[00:07:23] When this woman was confronted about her post, she admitted it was unacceptable and even deleted her Facebook page. And that was after the post was deleted. And I have read other reporting which seems to indicate that she was the one who deleted the post, so I'm not sure whether that's correct, but it was previously deleted. Then, after she was confronted, she agreed that it was unacceptable and even said that she was deleting her Facebook page. She provided character references showing that she is someone who lives a quiet and productive lifestyle and is not socially disruptive or socially dysfunctional. She's not a threat to anyone in the community. The judge clearly stated that her comment online was not made with any malicious intent. She wasn't trying to incite violence or arson or anything like that. Instead, she just did something ugly, abusive, toxic and foolish. She is not a member of any extremist groups. She has no prior record for any form of criminal offending.
[00:08:29] She is the primary carer for her husband. And I have read other reporting which indicates that her husband is also disabled. And last but not least, her social media comment did not result in any concrete harm in the real world. It merely caused emotional offence to one person, it seems, at this stage, but it did not result in any tangible real world violence or criminal offending on the part of anyone else.
[00:09:03] In my humble opinion, this is a troubling, very troubling and unjust, overreaction. To a typically foolish social media moment. In fact, it's so typical that we actually have a name for this kind of behavior, and it's known as online disinhibition effect. And as the name suggests, people get online and their inhibitions go out the window. They lose their ability to empathize. Well, because they don't see human persons, they don't see human faces, they don't see human eyes, they don't hear human voices, they are simply engaging with pixels on a screen, and so their empathy mechanisms don't function as they normally should. People often think that they are speaking effectively into the ether, like there's no real person on the end of what they're saying, and they often then just do and say things that are totally out of character and which they would never do to someone in the real world. They just do these kinds of things in online spaces. Like I said, this is online disinhibition effect. And while the judge has highlighted the fact that this happened during a time of violent uprest in the United Kingdom, it seems also fair that if you're going to highlight that as a contributing factor, that surely it must also be a mitigating circumstance on her part as well. The fact that she's caught up in this moment of great social upheaval and in an active online disinhibition effect. She says something foolish and ugly in a Facebook group. Surely that should have been considered in all of this. I actually went and looked online, and according to Bloomsburylaw Dot UK, who are an organization of barristers, their website states, common assault, that's actually physically assaulting someone carries a maximum penalty of six months in prison and or a fine. A person charged with a common assault first offence. So they've never offended at any other time previously. This is the first time they've actually been before. The courts is likely to receive a fine rather than a custodial sentence, so they don't go to jail, in other words.
[00:11:25] But this woman here, who did something far less harmful and impactful in the community than carry out an act of common assault on another human person, has received almost three times the custodial sentence that you could get if you engage in an act of common assault. So if she'd gone out onto the street and carried out an act of common assault, and assuming there was no grievous bodily harm as a result of it, potentially she could have actually spent less time in jail than what she is about to experience. Now for simply posting a foolish and ugly comment online, unfortunately, I think this has all the hallmarks of an overzealous state in a time of panicked crisis, which also lacks the necessary competency to handle such situations with property prudence and good oversight. Not only is there a serious question of justice involved in all of this, but this is exactly the kind of official response that tends to make things a lot worse in the long run. It's the kind of behaviour that ends up actually irritating more people, inflaming situations and even radicalising people. I also have to wonder whether she would have been jailed if she had made this sort of comment about a christian church. Now, I can't say for certain, and neither can you, but I do have to wonder whether the nature of the religious building, which she targeted with her ugly comment, was one of the primary drivers behind all of this. The other thing I'd have to say here is that the judge in this case doesn't actually seem to understand how social media works, because he has made this reference to the fact that she had this massive audience. But in actual fact, that's not how Facebook works at all. Even if you've got your own personal page, and even if it was her personal page and she had 5100 followers, that does not mean that she's actually going to reach a massive audience. First of all, the people who are going to see that post have to be online to see the post. Secondly, depending on what the algorithm is doing, a lot of people in that group may not actually see the post at all. It's actually not common for the majority of people in a group like that to see all of the content that is posted. So first of all, they've actually got to be online in the right window. And secondly, the algorithm has to be working in a specific way where people are being shown that kind of content. And that's also on top of the fact that what Facebook tends to do is try and encourage people to pay for boosting of posts, so that lots more people in your group get to see it. So they generally restrict the audience reach until you give them more money. And then when you give them cash, they then let all of the people, or more of the people in your group actually see the post. And of course, it's also dependent on how long the post is online. So if this was online for a brief period before it was pulled down, it's quite conceivable that very few people actually saw this post. And here's the thing, and it doesn't indicate in this reporting whether or not this happened. And there is in fact no indication at all that they've done this. But the judge could have actually sought out actual metrics from the Facebook group administrators. What they could have done is they could have shown them here's what our metrics are, here's how many people are being reached by our posts each day, each week, et cetera. And they could also show them the various traffic movements over that period, like how many people were actually coming to the group, all that kind of stuff. But it doesn't appear that they've done any of that. And despite not actually assessing whether or not this really did reach that many people, and quite clearly it had no concrete, tangible harms that happened in the real world. As a result of this post, she has still been sent to jail for 15 months. This is, as far as I'm concerned, an injustice. It is a failure to govern well. And if you heard my patron's only episode earlier this week about the foxes, the lions and the wolves, this is exactly what was being talked about in that particular piece of commentary. The foxes don't really understand how to use force properly and prudently, and so they are often very inept, misdirected and even harmful in the way they do use policing, because they don't really use it in a good or virtuous way. And I'd have to say that this seems to be a classic example of this. As you can hear from this reporting, this woman has not carried out any violent act. She was not on the streets. She has not tried to incite anyone. Even the judge said that this was not deliberate, this was just recklessness. And that brings me all the way back to the fundamental question that we should consider when we are determining how laws are made and how they are enforced. And that question is this, what goods are worth having and at what price? So yes, the good of a just, stable and peaceful civil order is a fundamentally important thing that needs to be protected, promoted and upheld. But at what price? Because if we are not careful in our attempts to do something which is good, to uphold a just, stable and peaceful civil order, we could very easily fall into excess. And if we fall into excess in our efforts to try and defend or promote a just, stable, peaceful civil order, we are now actually causing harm. I would argue it is very clear in this case, on the balance of facts as they stand, that this judge has actually not done anything to enhance community safety. He has not done anything to protect the vulnerable here. He has actually just introduced a harm into the community by taking this course of action this decision was unjust, in my humble opinion, and I am hoping against hope that somehow a good and kind lawyer will take up her case, and somehow common sense will prevail very shortly before this goes too much longer. Because there's just no way in a sane, rational and just world that this woman should be spending one year and three months in a prison cell. Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the Dispatchers.
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