There are a great many Britons who have either been kicked off of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook due to these site’s oppressive ‘hate speech’ policies, or who have given up on them due to the worry that these platforms may be acting as police informers. Britons who exercise their inalienable right to speak about the matters that concern them, even controversial matters such as Islam, immigration or politics, on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, run the risk that these sites will readily give up user information to UK police forces if the force requests it. This user information is then used by the police to put together ‘hate speech’ charges against the particular Briton, which can lead to fines and even prison for the ‘wrong-thinker’.
However, the approach of Gab, the free speech social media site, is refreshingly and laudably different. When Gab was approached recently by a UK police force requesting user data for a Gabber who the police wished to identify on the grounds that the individual was committing a ‘hate speech’ ‘crime’, Gab told the police in no uncertain terms, to ‘go forth and multiply’. Gab refused to hand over user data and cited the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech, as their reason for refusal.
Below is the communication that Gab received from an as yet unidentified British police force.
And below are reproductions of Gab’s heart-warming reply to UK Plod.
As one of the many Britons who are now, to all intents and purposes, dissidents, and who are in this position, merely because we believe or have opinions that the government doesn’t approve of, such as that there are only two genders or that Islam is not a religion of peace, I heartily congratulate Gab on its stance for freedom here. It is gratifying to see Gab stand up for the concept of freedom of speech, by refusing to co-operate with a British police force, that is behaving far too much like a bunch of censors in uniform.
There must be many Britons reading about Gab’s response to Britain’s ‘speech police’ who are feeling mightily relieved that Gab has stuck to their guns over the issue of freedom of speech and told the police that their ‘hate speech’ writ does not apply in the United States. I reckon that the many thousands of dissident Britons who live in fear of the censor and at risk of a dubious ‘hate speech’ arrest are breathing a sigh of relief that Gab will have refused to give their details to the British police in order that the individual British ‘wrong thinker’ can be harassed.
As I said earlier, the identity of the particular police force who made this request is not yet known to me, but I will speculate that this request may well be coming from one of those police forces that have a particularly bad reputation for political correctness and censorship. If you was to ask me what forces may have put this request in, then my primary suspects would be the Metropolitan Police, West Mercia Police or West Midlands Police. This is because I know that all these named forces are ones where a lot of effort has been expended, or rather wasted, on hunting down ‘speech criminals’.
Whatever one thinks of some of the users of Gab, and some of them are not to my own personal taste, I believe that anyone who respects the concept of freedom of speech should congratulate Gab on taking a stand against an oppressive British police force who wanted Gab to supply them with data in order to oppress a British subject.
Well done Gab for telling this particular police force to shove their ‘hate speech’ law and their request firmly where the sun will never shine. There is today, because of Gab’s actions in refusing the request from this police force, a British dissident somewhere in the UK who is not spending the first night (of probably many) in a prison cell on some dubious ‘hate speech’ charge. Gab has shown itself to be a platform that will not side with the oppressor and for that they need to be praised.
