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[return to "The App Store was always authoritarian"]
1. mycoco+a7[view] [source] 2025-10-12 08:37:17
>>bertma+(OP)
Maybe it's not a great idea to allow a company to decide what software users can run, and I am inclined to believe that Murphy's Law will apply. Ultimately, software is freedom of speech.
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2. shafie+I7[view] [source] 2025-10-12 08:42:30
>>mycoco+a7
I never thought about this topic to have an opinion on this, but this is the best take for sure!
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3. schoen+58[view] [source] 2025-10-12 08:46:09
>>shafie+I7
The "software is speech" idea was popularized partly by being used (successfully) as an argument in litigation about U.S. software export controls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_as_speech

(It was later partly rejected by other courts in the DMCA anticircumvention context.)

This argument doesn't imply that companies have to help you publish your software, because they might be entitled to some kind of editorial control over which speech they do or don't distribute. But it does at least imply that the stakes of such control are very high and that free speech norms may be implicated by them!

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