World News

38847 readers

2434 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

quinten@lemmy.world

NewsAutoMod@lemmy.world

jordanlund@lemmy.world

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

little_cow@lemmy.world

lemmyAtom@lemmy.world

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world

235

Police spammed with complaints by neo-Nazis under new Scottish hate crime law (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 6 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

First minister calls for end to vexatious reports after far-right agitators attempt to ‘overwhelm’ official systems

Neo-Nazi and far-right agitators are exploiting Scotland’s new hate crime law to make vexatious complaints en masse in an attempt to “overwhelm” police systems.

A prominent figure in England’s white nationalist movement is among those urging followers to spam Police Scotland with anonymous online reports, the *Observer *has found.

The leader of a far-right group – one of several fringe organisations being assessed by the UK government under its new extremism definition – promoted a private channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that includes a “call to action” urging members to “mass report”.

Posts in the channel instruct members to log cases of supposed “anti-white” hate, which they say includes a statement on the police force’s website that “young men aged 18-30 are most likely to commit hate crime”.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Olap@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Anonymous complaints are a terrible idea. No wlnder this has been targetted

[–] Minotaur@lemm.ee 52 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Anonymous complaints are a good thing, it’s often important to be able to report something non-publicly. It’s just being exploited here.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 7 points 6 months ago

The fact that this system can be exploited by neo Nazis should tell you that it can be exploited by anyone. Including the cops who will be investigating these complaints.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 5 points 6 months ago

Non-public and anonymous are not the same thing. I don't know about your jurisdiction but when you file a criminal complaint police do take down your name and address, if you're worried about retaliation or such there's ways to have all public records under a pseudonym and e.g. your lawyer's address, but the state will still know who you actually are.

You can also give an anonymous tip to the police -- but those don't ever reach the level of complaint. Police and prosecutors can toss such a statement without much fanfare, even if they don't they can't follow-up with questions, you're way less credible as a witness, especially since you can't be nailed for false accusation, at least not without investigators hunting you down. You can't file an accessory suit (that is, be a co-prosecutor) because courts definitely don't deal with anonymous people, if they anonymise the public record then because they think it's the right thing to do to serve justice, not because you don't want to show your face to at least the judge(s).