Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-277_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 67.0

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

5 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

Content-moderation provisions.  “Content moderation” is 
the gentle-sounding term used by internet platforms to de-
note  actions  they  take  purportedly  to  ensure  that  user- 
provided content complies with their terms of service and
“community standards.”  The Florida law eschews this ne-
ologism  and  instead  uses  the  old-fashioned  term  “censor-
ship.”  To  prevent  platforms  from  discriminating  against 
certain views or speakers, that law requires each regulated
platform to enforce its “censorship . . . standards in a con-
sistent manner among its users on the platform.”  Fla. Stat. 
§501.2041(2)(b).  The law defines “censorship” as any action
taken to: “delete, regulate, restrict, edit, alter, [or] inhibit”
users from posting their own content; “post an addendum 
to any content or material posted by a user”; or “inhibit the 
ability of a user to be viewable by or to interact with another 
user.”  §501.2041(1)(b).

To  prevent  platforms  from  attempting  to  evade  this  re-
striction by regularly modifying their practices, the law pro-
hibits  platforms  from  changing  their  censorship  “rules, 
terms, and agreements . . . more than once every 30 days.” 
§501.2041(2)(c).  And to give Floridians more control over
how they view content on social-media websites, the law re-
quires each platform to give its users the ability to “opt out” 
of  its  content-sorting  “algorithms”  and  instead  view  posts 
sequentially or chronologically.  §501.2041(2)(f ).6 

Although some platforms still have employees who mon-
itor  and  organize  social-media  feeds,  for  most  platforms,
“the  incredible  volume  of  content  shared  each  day  makes 
human review of each new post impossible.”  Brief for De-
velopers Alliance et al. as Amici Curiae 4.  Consequently, 
platforms rely heavily on algorithms to organize and censor 
content.  Ibid.  And it is likely that they will increasingly 
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6 As relevant here, an “algorithm” is a program that platforms use to 
automatically “censor” or “moderate” content that violates their terms or 
conditions, to organize the results of a search query, or to display posts 
in a feed.