2 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 businesses, civic organizations, and governments. The novel services they offer make our lives better, and make them worse—create unparalleled opportunities and unprecedented 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 legislatures 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 protected traditional media’s rights. To the extent that socialmedia 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 compilations 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 select and shape other parties’ expression into their own curated 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, government efforts to alter an edited compilation of third-party

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