Yes, most of the court felt intermediate scrutiny was the appropriate standard in part because of the reasons you outlined.

(I also agree that this is a different case, I only point to Bernstein because it is a clear part of case law which states that software distribution is and can be a free speech issue and restraints on it would be expected to be evaluated with some level of scrutiny.)

The justices on the Supreme Court analyzed the constitutionality of this law under a free speech basis. The Per Curiam opinion of the court suggested the correct standard was intermediate scrutiny as an abridgment of free speech. Justice Sotomayor suggested in her concurrence that strict scrutiny (the highest standard) was appropriate.

They concluded that these regulations were okay at those levels of scrutiny, but it is not absurd or ridiculous to analyze these as forms of speech, and indeed, our courts do so.

That said, just because there is a conflict with freedom of speech doesn’t prevent all government regulation, it just means the laws involved must pass an elevated level of scrutiny. That applies here, for multiple reasons, and with multiple parties.

I’m not, for what it’s worth. I’m arguing that I think the free speech case is stronger for the users and software distributors who are enjoined from the platform or distributing certain software applications than it is for the platform whose ownership but not content or speech is being directly regulated. (The law doesn’t fine TikTok it fines the people providing services to TikTok. Their speech rights may be more relevant in this case.)

I also see why people are interpreting my comment to mean that because it’s a restriction on my speech it’s not constitutional because that’s how people usually act on the Internet. But I don’t and didn’t. What I said was it was a restriction on my speech and I believe that’s more of interesting case than the restriction on TikTok’s speech. The ramification of that is that the courts would adjudicate the free speech restriction at an appropriate scrutiny level and determine whether that restriction is allowable. As we all know, some restrictions are allowable and constitutional. Others aren’t.

It’s not unreasonable, wild, or strange to point out that there’s a restriction on speech here, and to point out that conflict needed to be resolved to determine constitutionality.

Most are handled at the district level, if the court felt there was no legal issue at play, they would have denied cert. Their opinion did end up being per curiam which suggests the court feels clearly about the case, but does not suggest they never felt there was an issue worth arguing.