alt Hacker NewsI mean in a broad sense if you read any news about the UK it might looks like a dystopian surveillance state where you get arrested for criticising the king(I kid you not - I've had multiple American coworkers ask me if this is true).
And yes, UK has some awful laws around this. Yes it has put people in jail just for planning a protest before. Yes you can go to jail for not disclosing your passwords. But what you read on the internet is almost laughably out of proportion - no, you won't get arrested for posting a meme about the king.
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Yeah, it's true, you should go back to your coworkers and straighten it up.
6 people got arrested for trying to say "Not my king!" BEFORE his coronation: https://londondaily.com/not-my-king-anti-monarchy-protesters...
Before they had a chance of protest. After months of discussing the planned protest in details and getting a green light from the Met Police: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65542558
It's not like Republicans in the UK are a violent group, unlike far right coddled by the same Met police.
52 people were arrested DURING the coronation, for example for holding a placard "not my king": https://londondaily.com/over-52-anti-monarchy-protestors-arr...
Police arrested despite KNOWING it's baseless and frankly illegal: https://novaramedia.com/2025/03/11/police-officer-who-arrest...
Tell me some more how it isn't arresting for criticising the king. Oh, well, technically he wasn't a king yet.... but that's even worse to be fair.
> news about the UK it might looks like a dystopian surveillance state where you get arrested for criticising
Might it "seem" that way because it is that way?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-a...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/22/britain-has-beco...
https://freespeechunion.org/news/more-than-62-000-people-hav...
Oh, and your government itself openly states it on record, too: https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C...
FWIW the same applies to flying in the U.S. as long as you're not a person that the government cares about. I haven't had any issues with either TSA or CBP since 2011 (when, apparently, being multiracial with facial hair made me look Middle-Eastern and looking Middle-Eastern is a cardinal sin at U.S. ports of entry). Neither has anyone I've observed at the airport, and that's thousands of people per flight, and I fly about 3-4 times per year. There's plenty of stories on the Internet, and I don't doubt the stories are true, but the Internet can easily make a 1-in-a-million occurrence happen every day (indeed, given the sheer numbers, a 1 in a million occurrence does happen every day, it's just that it's unlikely to happen to you).