Adi Robertson

The brand is effective and lucrative. The “we’re the noble defenders of civilization, upholding free thought from the onslaught of the woke hordes” sells these days. It sells even when free thought is actually under more profound assault from cynical and powerful and absolutely not woke forces. It sells even though — as I will get to in a minute — there’s a difference between tolerance and platforming.

In effect this would roll back some aspects of companies like ExTwitter and Reddit trying to restrict access to their APIs and putting up ridiculously expensive paywalls for that access. It would be tearing down walls and enabling more innovation. [...] I like the concept of the bill, but I’m just not sure New York really has the authority to do this like this, and I worry on the margins about some of the way the bill is written.

The lower court caselaw is a total mess. No one can say what the law is. And I’ve been waiting for a case to come down that might be a good candidate for U.S. Supreme Court review to clear up the mess.

Here’s a possibility: The Utah Supreme Court’s ruling today in State v. Valdez.

The probe was sparked by a complaint nearly four years ago from Sweden’s Spotify Technoloy SA, which claimed it was forced to ramp up the price of its monthly subscriptions to cover costs associated with Apple’s alleged stranglehold on how the App Store operates. The European Commission homed in on Apple’s anti-steering rules in a formal charge sheet in February, saying the conditions are unnecessary and mean customers may end up paying more.