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Facebook is in the doghouse with certain liberal constituencies because it declines to edit or censor political advertisements that may contain false statements or misleading claims. We side with Facebook on this one.

Among other things, attempting to tease truth from political claims is often as challenging today as it was when Hamilton and Burr went at it a few years ago. We arent suggesting that todays politicians settle their disputes in similar fashion, in a field with pistols. But ... never mind.

While some political assertions are demonstrably false, others are not; and some fact-checking outfits allow their own political biases to affect their true or false verdicts.

Facebook says it is adding features that will allow its users some measure of control over the number of political and social issue ads they want to see. But it says it operates from the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all.

It is up to the people to decide whether they buy what some politician or group is selling. Facebook is one platform and while it is huge, we dont think imposing some government censorship on it is a good thing.

Part of the trouble here is that some anti-Trumpers still refuse to believe that rational people voted for this guy of their own free will. They must have been duped, the theory goes, by Facebook and other means.

Continuing to believe that is not going to win elections. Stating facts and offering sensible solutions to the nations problems may do so.

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Facts and Facebook: It shouldn't censor political ads - The Union Leader

The head of the Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a scathing statement Wednesday aimed at China's government over its treatment of protesters in Hong Kong and other suspected rights abuses.

In his opening essay for HRW's yearly report, executive director Kenneth Roth wrote that China's efforts to maintain control of its territories "is increasingly undermining the international system for protecting human rights."

"To maintain its grasp on power at home, the Chinese Communist Party has constructed an Orwellian high-tech surveillance state and a sophisticated Internet censorship system to monitor and suppress public criticism," Roth wrote.

"President Xi Jinpings government is overseeing the most brutal and pervasive oppression that China has seen for decades," HRW added in a news release accompanying the report's publication.

Roth went on to accuse the Chinese government of constructing an "Orwellian" surveillance state that it is seeking to export abroad.

"Now, China has begun to use its growing economic and diplomatic clout to extend that censorship abroad, silencing critics and carrying out the most intense attack on the global system for enforcing human rights seen since its emergence in the mid-twentieth century," he wrote.

"If not challenged, Beijings actions portend a dystopian future in which no one is beyond the reach of Chinese censors, and an international human rights system so weakened that it no longer serves as a check on government repression," Roth continued.

His warnings come after the NBA faced backlash in China over a team manager's statement in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, while the organization's efforts to apologize to angered Chinese fans drew criticism from lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

Washington has threatened to respond with sanctions should violent crackdowns against protesters in Hong Kong begin, while China has vowed to retaliate if the Trump administration implements such measures.

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Human Rights Watch rips 'brutal and pervasive oppression' in China | TheHill - The Hill

After anti-regime protests rocked Iran over the weekend, the country is considering an even further crackdown on internet freedom on top of the censorship that's already in place. This offers yet another reminder why we must resist calls from liberals and nationalist conservatives alike to give the government increased power over the web.

The threat of a violent crackdown on protesters looms after demonstrations began on Saturday. The unrest arose after the revelation that the Iranian military accidentally shot down a passenger aircraft, killing all 176 people on board, including Ukrainians and Iranians alike. Thousands took to the street, protesting the regime and chanting, Death to the dictator. Now, government forces have started shooting protesters.

Meanwhile, the countrys authoritarian crackdown on technology threatens to make the situation much, much worse. According to Newsweek, parts of the country are now experiencing suspiciously-timed internet outages, raising alarms in light of the Iranian internet infrastructure being state-run. So, too, the regime will reportedly consider mandating a complete structural shift from an internet to an intranet. This would cut off access for millions and force everyone else onto the wired intranet connections it controls and has previously used to silence protesters and quell unrest.

Heres how tech publication Wired explained the regimes past repressive practices:

Increasingly over the past decade, the Iranian regime has focused on building out a centralized national "intranet." That allows it to provide citizens with web services while policing all content on the network and limiting information from external sources ... In the process of establishing this internal web, the Iranian regime has taken more and more control over both public and private connectivity in the name of national security.

Specific examples reveal the terrifying consequences of such concentrated government control.

For example, in 2009, the Iranian regime simply "turned off" the internet in many parts of the country to quell unrest that emerged as a result of that year's elections. And it interfered with the 2013 election as well, by blocking websites containing certain keywords and candidates' names. In a more recent example, in 2018, the Iranian regime blocked the popular messaging service Telegram in a blatant attempt to shut down critics' communications. It also launched a crackdown on the virtual private networks citizens were using to circumvent censorship tools.

The technicalities and specifics involved in this kind of internet censorship are quite complicated, but the lesson is clear: Granting government power over the free flow of information is a recipe for abuse.

The Iranian example offers an important warning against the kind of big-government policies proposed by socialist presidential aspirants such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and a poignant reminder as to why we should never grant the state control over the internet. Of course, most Democrats arent calling for an all-out takeover of the web, but some are getting dangerously close.

Sanders, for instance, has called internet access a human right and thus believes it should be a publicly owned utility. As I previously described his formal campaign plan, The senator ... would essentially have the federal government take control of the internet in almost Orwellian fashion.

And Warren has repeatedly called for big government to step in and break up Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Google.

This isnt as extreme as a complete government takeover, but the Massachusetts Democrat and socialist-lite presidential candidate has nonetheless said she thinks Silicon Valley should be subjected to the whims and dictates of Washington bureaucrats. Sadly, in this desire to see government heavily involved in the internet, Warren is joined by some anti-tech conservatives, such as Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.

Plus, pretty much every elected Democrat supports reinstating net neutrality, the unnecessary regulation of internet service providers that was instituted under the Obama administration. Support for various levels of state control of the internet has become commonplace on the Left, and, increasingly, on the nationalist Right as well.

But sensible observers should look at the way Iran has used state control of the internet to oppress its people and reject these proposals. No, none of the Democrats' individual policies would turn our online experience into an Iranian nightmare overnight. Yet they would all shift the needle substantially toward state control, paving the way for further expansion of government power and future abuses. The Iranian example makes it clear that the only way to preserve a free and open internet is to keep the government as far away from it as possible.

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Iran's digital dystopia shows why we should never give government control of the internet - Washington Examiner

In retaliation, Ayatollah Khomeini should tweet a list of 52 sites of beloved American cultural heritage that he would bomb.

So wrote Asheen Phansey, an adjunct professor at Babson College in Massachusetts. He added that cultural sites to target might include the Mall of America and the Kardashian residence. Not the funniest of jokes (and not helped by the fact that Khomeini died more than 30 years ago) but definitely a joke and a response to Trumps tweet that America would target 52 Iranian sites, including those of cultural significance, if Tehran did retaliate for the assassination of General Qassem Suleimani.

It led to an inevitable outpouring of outrage on Twitter from conservative snowflakes. By the end of the day, Phansey was no longer teaching at Babson. The post did not represent the values and culture of the College, read a statement. The college condemned any type of threatening words and/or actions condoning violence and/or hate. Its just as well that John Betjeman was never a professor at Babson.

Much is made today of liberals demanding action against those using offensive language or making politically incorrect jokes. The Babson case shows conservatives are equally easily offended.

Across the Atlantic came another illustration of rightwing outrage. The release of Tolo Tolo, an Italian film satirising anti-migrant hysteria, caused anger among conservatives who had thought that it would be hostile to immigrants. It is too politically correct, claimed a senator from Silvio Berlusconis Forza Italia party. Which only goes to show that its politically correct has come to mean little more than I dont like it.

The Babson case also shows the dangers of the left demanding censorship of offensive speech. Its not just speech the left thinks is politically incorrect that will get censored.

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Left and right should learn to take a joke, not censor them - The Guardian

Says KKK and neo-Nazis are not universally disliked

A University of Miami law professor argues that any criticism of the #MeToo movement is seductive fraud, while suggesting that the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups are not universally disliked.

Mary Anne Franks wrote Witch Hunts: Free Speech, #MeToo, and the Fear of Womens Words in the student-edited University of Chicago Legal Forum. In the lengthy article, she argues that the phrase witch hunt existed only as a means for men to silence women.

The phrase came about out of the Salem witch trials and is used as a means to shut down the free speech of women, according to Franks. The modern case is the #MeToo movement, which has seen thousands of women share stories of sexual harassment and assault on social media.

The movement was criticized for going too far and lowering the bar for what qualified as sexual assault and harassment, and certain critics used the term witch hunt to describe it. Franks says the use of the term is the silencing of women by white men.

[T]he very term witch hunt has been energetically and ironically repurposed to convey the persecution and silencing of men by women, Franks writes. In this Orwellian inversion, womens speech about mens abuses is characterized as a dangerous form of censorship, while mens criticism of that speech is characterized as a brave refusal to be silenced.

She continues: Whether women are cast as witches who must be burnt or witch hunters who must be stopped, their speech continues to be feared and repressed rather than celebrated and protected.

The article appears to be from the new 2020 edition of the journal. As of Monday afternoon it is not mentioned on the journals home page, which shows the 2019 edition also about #MeToo as the most recent.

The law school tweeted the article Saturday, prompting mockery from criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield.

Franks University of Miami faculty profile says she has been at the forefront of drafting legislation against so-called revenge porn, and is the author of a 2019 book The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech.

Franks cited First Amendment jurisprudence on freedom of speech throughout her article, noting the ACLUs history of defending the free speech rights of neo-Nazis and the KKK, but stopped short of supporting it. The ACLU, she said, supports the legal rights of fringe groups because the people whose opinions are the most controversial or extreme are the people whose rights are most often threatened.

But in the next sentence, the University of Miami law professor claims that there is no evidence that the KKK and neo-Nazis are clearly neither universally disliked nor singled out for official discrimination. Indeed, what these groups tend to have in common is that they target truly vulnerable groups, such as women and minorities.

The College Fix has reached out to Franks seeking clarification on her comments and what she would consider universal dislike of the KKK and neo-Nazis.

She debated libertarian social scientist Charles Murray at a law school event nearly two years ago; the university initially tried to charge the sponsoring Federalist Society $7,600 in security fees.

MORE: UMiami agrees to pay security fee for Charles Murray talk after pressure from conservative law students

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Miami law professor says criticism of #MeToo is 'seductive fraud' and censorship of women - The College Fix