Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-277_d18f.pdf
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MOODY v. NETCHOICE, LLC 

Opinion of the Court 

These  years  have  brought  a  dizzying  transformation  in
how people communicate, and with it a raft of public policy 
issues.  Social-media platforms, as well as other websites,
have gone from unheard-of to inescapable.  They structure 
how  we  relate  to  family  and  friends,  as  well  as  to  busi-
nesses,  civic  organizations,  and  governments.  The  novel 
services  they  offer  make  our  lives  better,  and  make  them 
worse—create  unparalleled  opportunities  and  unprece-
dented dangers.  The questions of whether, when, and how 
to regulate online entities, and in particular the social-media
giants, are understandably on the front-burner of many leg-
islatures and agencies.  And those government actors will 
generally be better positioned than courts to respond to the 
emerging challenges social-media entities pose. 

But courts still have a necessary role in protecting those
entities’  rights  of  speech,  as  courts  have  historically  pro-
tected traditional media’s rights.  To the extent that social-
media  platforms  create  expressive  products,  they  receive 
the  First  Amendment’s  protection.  And  although  these
cases are here in a preliminary posture, the current record
suggests  that  some  platforms,  in  at  least  some  functions, 
are indeed engaged in expression.  In constructing certain
feeds, those platforms make choices about what third-party 
speech to display and how to display it.  They include and
exclude, organize and prioritize—and in making millions of 
those decisions each day, produce their own distinctive com-
pilations of expression.  And while much about social media 
is new, the essence of that project is something this Court 
has seen before.  Traditional publishers and editors also se-
lect and shape other parties’ expression into their own cu-
rated speech products.  And we have repeatedly held that
laws curtailing their editorial choices must meet the First 
Amendment’s requirements.  The principle does not change
because the curated compilation has gone from the physical
to the virtual world.  In the latter, as in the former, govern-
ment  efforts  to  alter  an  edited  compilation  of  third-party