Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-277_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 92.0

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MOODY v. NETCHOICE, LLC 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

For example, the majority paints an attractive, though sim-
plistic,  picture  of  what  Facebook’s  News  Feed  and 
YouTube’s  homepage  do  behind  the  scenes.  Taking
NetChoice at its word, the majority says that the platforms’
use of algorithms to enforce their community standards is 
per se  expressive.  But  the  platforms  have  refused  to  dis-
close how these algorithms were created and how they ac-
tually work.  And the majority fails to give any serious con-
sideration  to  key  arguments  pressed  by  the  States.    Most 
notable is the majority’s conspicuous failure to address  the 
States’  contention  that  platforms  like  YouTube  and  Face-
book—which constitute the 21st century equivalent of the
old “public square”—should be viewed as common carriers.
See Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia 
University,  593  U. S.  ___,  ___  (2021)  (Thomas,  J.,  concur-
ring) (slip op., at 6).  Whether or not the Court ultimately
accepts that argument, it deserves serious treatment. 

Instead of seriously engaging  with this and other argu-
ments, the majority rests on NetChoice’s dubious assertion 
that  there  is  no  constitutionally  significant  difference  be-
tween what newspaper editors did more than a half-century 
ago at the time of Tornillo and what Facebook and YouTube 
do today.

Maybe that is right—but maybe it is not.  Before mechan-
ically  accepting  this  analogy,  perhaps  we  should  take  a 
closer look. 

Let’s start with size.  Currently, Facebook and YouTube
each produced—on a daily basis—more than four petabytes
(4,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data.54  By my calculation,
that is roughly 1.3 billion times as many bytes as there are 
in an issue of the New York Times.55 

—————— 

54 Breaking Down the Numbers: How Much Data Does the World Cre-
in  2024?  Edge  Delta  (Mar.  11,  2024),  https://www.

ate  Daily 
edgedelta.com/company/blog/how-much-data-is-created-per-day. 

55 The average issue of the New York Times, excluding ads, contains