Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024)
23
Opinion of the Court
post’s viewpoint.8 And what does that “based on viewpoint”
requirement entail? Doubtless some of the platforms’ contentmoderation practices are based on characteristics of speech
other than viewpoint (e.g., on subject matter). But if
Texas’s law is enforced, the platforms could not—as they in
fact do now—disfavor posts because they:
support Nazi ideology;
advocate for terrorism;
espouse racism, Islamophobia, or anti-Semitism;
glorify rape or other gender-based violence;
encourage teenage suicide and self-injury;
discourage the use of vaccines;
advise phony treatments for diseases;
advance false claims of election fraud.
The list could continue for a while.9 The point of it is not
that the speech environment created by Texas’s law is
worse than the ones to which the major platforms aspire on
their main feeds. The point is just that Texas’s law profoundly alters the platforms’ choices about the views they
will, and will not, convey.
And we have time and again held that type of regulation
to interfere with protected speech. Like the editors, cable
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8 The Texas solicitor general explained at oral argument that the Texas
law allows the platforms to remove “categories” of speech, so long as they
are not based on viewpoint. See Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 22–555, at 69–
70; §120.052 (Acceptable Use Policy). The example he gave was speech
about Al-Qaeda. Under the law, a platform could remove all posts about
Al-Qaeda, regardless of viewpoint. But it could not stop the “proAl-Qaeda” speech alone; it would have to stop the “anti-Al-Qaeda” speech
too. Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 22–555, at 70. So again, the law, as described
by the solicitor general, prevents the platforms from disfavoring posts
because they express one view of a subject.
9 Details on both the enumerated examples and similar ones are found
in Facebook’s Community Standards and YouTube’s Community Guidelines. See https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards;
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9288567.