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MOODY v. NETCHOICE, LLC 

Syllabus 

message of “pride.”  Id., at 561.  It held that ordering the group’s ad-
mittance would “alter the expressive content of the[ ] parade,” and that
the decision to exclude the group’s message was the organizers’ alone.  
Id., at 572–574. 

From  that  slew  of  individual  cases,  three  general  points  emerge. 
First, the First Amendment offers protection when an entity engaged 
in compiling and curating others’ speech into an expressive product of 
its  own  is  directed  to  accommodate  messages  it  would  prefer  to  ex-
clude.  Second, none of that changes just because a compiler includes 
most items and excludes just a few.  It “is enough” for the compiler to 
exclude  the  handful  of  messages  it  most  “disfavor[s].”  Hurley,  515 
U. S., at 574.  Third, the government cannot get its way just by assert-
ing an interest in better balancing the marketplace of ideas.  In case 
after case, the Court has barred the government from forcing a private
speaker  to  present  views  it  wished  to  spurn  in  order  to  rejigger  the 
expressive realm.  Pp. 13–19. 

(2) “[W]hatever  the  challenges  of  applying  the  Constitution  to 
ever-advancing technology, the basic principles” of the First Amend-
ment  “do  not  vary.”  Brown  v.  Entertainment  Merchants  Assn.,  564 
U. S. 786, 790.  And the principles elaborated in the above-summarized
decisions establish that Texas is not likely to succeed in enforcing its 
law against the platforms’ application of their content-moderation pol-
icies to their main feeds. 

Facebook’s News Feed and YouTube’s homepage present users with 
a continually updating, personalized stream of other users’ posts.  The 
key to the scheme is prioritization of content, achieved through algo-
rithms.  The selection and ranking is most often based on a user’s ex-
pressed interests and past activities, but it may also be based on other
factors, including the platform’s preferences.  Facebook’s Community
Standards and YouTube’s Community Guidelines detail the messages
and  videos  that  the  platforms  disfavor.    The  platforms  write  algo-
rithms to implement those standards—for example, to prefer content
deemed particularly trustworthy or to suppress content viewed as de-
ceptive.    Beyond  ranking  content,  platforms  may  add  labels,  to  give
users additional context.  And they also remove posts entirely that con-
tain  prohibited  subjects  or  messages,  such  as  pornography,  hate 
speech, and misinformation on certain topics.  The platforms thus un-
abashedly control the content that will appear to users. 

Texas’s law, though, limits their power to do so.  Its central provision 
prohibits  covered  platforms  from  “censor[ing]”  a  “user’s  expression” 
based on the “viewpoint” it contains.  Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. 
§143A.002(a)(2).  The platforms thus cannot do any of the things they
typically do (on their main feeds) to posts they disapprove—cannot de-
mote,  label,  or  remove  them—whenever  the  action  is  based  on  the