We can go on.
This is not the first law affecting companies ability to speak freely in the marketplace of ideas.
They can publish such code with no restrictions.
What they might get in trouble for is putting that code in their products where it will be executed to unfairly prioritize their browser.
Why do you believe that this restriction’s impact on free speech is justified?
For a fun comparison, you may want to check https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/228/wooley-v-ma... , where the Supreme Court held that the government couldn’t force someone to drive around with the state slogan on their car, because it represented compelling speech.
That's not a significant harm. Corporations are given certain privileges (limited-liability, very much what section 230 is an extension of), we can outline certain responsibilities in exchange.
I don't want the phone company deciding what can be talked about over the phone. The technology is absolutely there for the phone company to start disconnecting conversations that it finds suspicious (for its own unaccountable, unauditable reasons) by algorithm, just like youtube taking down videos or twitter pulling down accounts.
The test for first amendment restrictions also isn’t “will the harm caused be significant”.
Phone companies handle point to point conversations; they don’t have or need this kind of conversation because I can’t pick up my phone and publish a message under my phone companies’s banner.
And apple of course can censor my calls on my iphone because it reflects poorly on apple for my iphone to be associated.
Got it. Makes perfect sense. Thanks for the clarity.
And Apple could decide to not let you call numbers that start with even digits.
Neither is a violation of the 1st amendment. You can disagree about whether or not that should be the case, or whether other laws (like antitrust or discrimination) should apply, but the first amendment views the government compelling speech the same way it views the government censoring speech, and the Supreme Court has consistently found that forcing an entity to display a message is compelling speech.
There was a case of a mall using the private property claims to stop union picketing and organizing, but the courts found this to be illegal.
If the space is generally open to the public, you have free speech rights in California.
This has stood for decades and has been law for longer in California, yet California is doing fine, and I would hardly consider California to be stifling free speech. Far from it.
We make bakers write things they disagree with on cakes with their own hands. In contrast facebooks cooperation when hosting content it disagrees with is much more remote and requires no manual intervention.