It has a negative connotation so it is hate speech? I think not. [edited: used to read hate crime, wasn't paying attention]

Everything could be hate speech for someone. Which what makes said laws arbitrary and dangerous.

You're the first one to bring up hate crimes here.

Edit: downvotes? Maybe you should look up UK hate speech laws before deciding that violating them constitutes as hate crime.

You're responding in a thread that started by someone claiming this was hate speech, and your response to one of the child posters is that "You're the first one to bring up hate crimes here". I imagine this is the reason for the completely warranted downvotes. Context matters, and you're just diverting the discussion without adding anything.

hate speech=/=hate crimes

UK has had, and still does have very aggressive legislation to combat "hate speech" and offensive speech in general.

It's not very far fetched that such a statement could have been in violation of said laws, but that certainly wouldn't make it a hate crime.

While jkots wording could have been better, there's still a very important distinction here.

Well, if there's very aggressive legislation to combat "hate speech", is it unreasonable to call this target of combat "hate crimes" (or hate "crimes")?

With such aggressive legislation, I'm a bit wary of even going to the UK (I'm not a native speaker of English.)

Yes, hate crimes are generally defined by the perpetrators motivations.

I think take away is that HN crowd has no sense of humor.

I got a chuckle out of this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11699860

More accurate would probably be to say, given the power of a vote, people with no sense of humor will use it to punish humorous comments. I feel like the larger majority typically rewards comments that are both humorous and provide content to the discussion.

>People were charged (and jailed)

The question is: Where? In the UK, or in NK? Also: if something is legal doesn't make it legitimate.

Don't know about jailing, but UK certainly has a tendency to fine (and otherwise very aggressively pursue) people for saying far less offensive things.

Look at the public order act for example.