Is your argument really that as long as the conviction is eventually overturned, no harm no foul it's just a "trivial case" so everyone should just pretend it never happened? Really?
It's trivial with respect to the question of whether political free expression in the UK is somehow under threat, yes. A handful of weird cases of extremely mild police overreach, corrected by a court -- hardly add up to anything. Every legal system in the world has such cases, in almost every other, they are much more extreme. In the UK, no one is paying for legal cases they win, unlike in the US where "free speech" is obtainable only if you can pay for your defence.
I mean in the UK we aren't used to using the court system to obtain our rights, but this is basically the american system. It's extraordinary to hear americans express concern that a handful of people in the UK had to use the standard court procedure to have their rights enforced, which they did.
Would the UK be better if these cases did not happen? Sure. But there's no legal system, almost by definition, that isnt going to have these cases. That's what courts exist to do -- to prevent executive overreach.
The question is why are a handful of people, whose rights were enforced by the courts, being used as political agitprop against the UK? The answer is pretty obvious. It's a deliberate project of the far right to create popular resentement towards democractic governments in the west, at the time these governemnts are arresting rioters for attempting to murder immigrants.
This isnt hard to see. These stories are spread by a very narrow range of extremely famous propagandists with a very obvious agenda.
None of them mention that these cases were all thrown out on appeal. Nor that there's a tiny number of them. Nor that all the ones that result in conviction are basically domestic terrorism
Can you see how even the fact that police will knock on your door for a social media post will by definition have a chilling effect on free expression? Will low wage hourly workers in the UK feel secure in voicing their dissatisfaction with their child's school knowing that, while they might be convicted of a crime for doing so, it will probably get overturned on appeal even though they'll lose their job in the interim; or, will they just shut up and go along with whatever they're unhappy about?
Do you think it would be better to have people sue those who insult them on social media, in order to bankrupt them -- as in so-called Free Speech america? Where on earth do you imagine free speech is so protected that your worry is a (2 or 3) in 70 million-short that you'd have to talk to a police officier?
The idea that we have police investigating social media posts (and the like) is largely just made up. Its a handful of cases.
Do you understand that you cannot have 100% perfect decision making (of police, or anyone else) in a society -- and that the people who want you to demand this 100% are the ones organsising murders on these platforms? The ones kidnapping people and enslaving them in foreign prisons?
You're just playing a useful idiot. The idea that people in the UK are, at large, even aware of these cases is nonesense, let alone are worried about a police visit for a social media post. Just open twitter: are any of the millions of UK profiles in any sense "reserved" or chilled by these police visits?
The people who are spouting this nonesense are worried because they use these platforms to incite race riots whose aim is to kill people. Have a little perspective.
Apart from the fact that you have private prosecution in the UK, there's definitely a difference between private action for compensation and state action that might come with a criminal record.
The UK is the home of Cautions and ASBO's where you find out you have a criminal record just like that.
A place where you'd rather call the police than intervene to stop an ongoing crime because you might end up with a criminal record.
