Trump violated First Amendment by forcing Facebook, Apple to remove ICE-tracking

hexage1814

Generally speaking, unless there was a sort of constitutional right of people submitting apps to app stores, I find it somewhat complicated, because the multibillion dollar corporation could always argue, "Oh, we didn't remove it because the government asked us to gain some favor with the current administration, but rather because it violated our user policy." Like, you can very, very, very easily hide behind a private corporation deciding to exercise its power to decide such an app violated their internal user policy. Hell, even if there were a public register of Trump asking them to remove an app, you could always argue, "Well, anyone, regardless of them being president of the United States or not, is free to ask for an app to be removed; anyone could theoretically demand and protest anything, and Trump, as any citizen, has this right" (not saying I agree with that thesis, to be clear). But I do believe the whole point highlights a bigger problem: a negative relation between big corporations and the government. I'm not sure how anyone would solve it. Maybe by sidelining the whole issue by making it easier for people to install apps from whatever the fuck they want, without the app stores gatekeeping what software one installs on their device. But if anything, we are moving far away from that, even on Android