‘The censorious effect is the same, even if deployed covertly’

Louise Perry at The Wall Street Journal

Parents “tell pollsters that they’re worried about the effect of social media on their children. Nonetheless, they persist in buying smartphones for them,” says Louise Perry. That’s why there is “increasing appetite for laws banning social media for those under 16.” If “parents are legally obliged to keep their kids off social media, the coordination problem is solved.” But “laws intended to protect children from the horrors of the internet could be used by governments to protect themselves from criticism.”

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‘Here is the common thread among college athletes accused of fixing games’

Mark Mitchell at the Chicago Tribune

Indictments “accusing a large number of basketball players of throwing college games have predictably triggered indignation,” but they “focus almost entirely on what these athletes did and how it might affect all of college sports while largely ignoring where they came from,” says Mark Mitchell. Many “come from areas with very low rates of economic mobility.” Why “do high-stakes failures — academic, disciplinary and now criminal — occur so persistently among talented young people from the same kinds of places”?

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‘It’s time for the world to boycott the US’

Donald Earl Collins at Al Jazeera

The U.S. has, “over the past year, consistently violated international norms and laws,” says Donald Earl Collins. Short of “civil strife, civil war, or military action, there is no other way for the world to disrupt U.S. aggression except through massive economic pressure.” If the “world wants the U.S. to do better by its own people and to act as a better nation-state on the global stage, it must act collectively to boycott and divest from U.S. influence.”

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‘New foreign aid rules will threaten lives’

Susana T. Fried and Alicia Ely Yamin at The Progressive

New foreign aid restrictions “will threaten the lives of people around the world, especially women and people who don’t fit into the administration’s narrow, unscientific categories of gender,” say Susana T. Fried and Alicia Ely Yamin. The “rules seem designed to avoid some of the inevitable litigation they will trigger, but will likely run afoul of domestic law in some countries.” The U.S. has “abandoned the planet’s most vulnerable people and is bullying others to assist with its discriminatory dirty work.”

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