"What’s at issue now is far greater than the propriety of a few dirty words. Arguments over whether and how to control the information distributed through social media go to the heart of America’s democratic ideals."

"By once again making such distinctions, particularly between personal speech and public speech, we have an opportunity to break out of our current ideological bind and create a democratic framework for governing social media that is consistent with the country’s values and traditions."

"Everyone saw that personal communication and public communication entailed different social norms, presented different sets of risks and benefits, and merited different legal, regulatory, and commercial responses."

"The fundamental principle governing personal communication was privacy"

"For early Americans, the doctrine had special importance. In the years leading up to the War of Independence, the British government routinely intercepted and read letters sent from the colonies to England."

"Incensed, the colonists responded by establishing their own “constitutional post,” with a strict requirement that mail be carried “under lock and key.” At the moment of the country’s birth, the secrecy of correspondence became a democratic ideal."

"“the principle of confidentiality of the mail in the American postal network dates back to, and is intimately intertwined with, the revolutionary goals of those who sought independence.”"

"A hundred years before the George Carlin case, the distinction between personal communication and public communication had been written into constitutional law."

"Congress, worried about constraining its investigative powers, was wary of shielding telegrams from its subpoenas; and the courts, loath to set broad new precedents, struggled with how to fit the new system into established law."

"During the second half of the nineteenth century, most states passed laws making it a crime for telegraph operators to disclose the contents of messages to others."

"Keeping telegrams secret, suggests historian of technology Thomas Jepsen, “came to be seen as a new form of ‘privilege,’ such as already existed under common law, similar to the privilege that protected the privacy of communication between a client and his lawyer, or between a physician and his patient.”"

"The prominent jurist and legal theorist Thomas M. Cooley was among the first to make the legal case that messages sent electronically deserve the same Fourth Amendment shield as those sent through the post."

"They had to treat all telegrams and phone calls the same, transmitting them without regard to the information they contained."

"Radio had been invented a decade earlier by the Italian electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi, but its use had been restricted to sending Morse signals to places telegraph lines couldn’t reach, like ships at sea."

"When the telegraph and the telephone arrived, they may have been new things in the world, but they had an important precedent in the mail system."

"For the first time, a large, dispersed audience could receive the same information simultaneously and without delay from a single source."

"As would be the case with the Internet nearly a century later, the exotic new medium remained in the hands of tinkerers and hobbyists during its early years."

"The nuisance became a crisis in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, when the Titanic sank after its fateful collision with an iceberg. Efforts to rescue the passengers were hindered by a barrage of amateur radio messages."

"Although European countries had begun imposing government controls on wireless traffic as early as 1903, radio had been left largely unregulated in the United States."

"As sales of sets soared in the boom years after the First World War, large companies moved into the market. Broadcasting became big business."

"The rapid rise of commercial radio made clear that broadcasting’s “uniquely pervasive presence,” as Justice Stevens later described it, would change the way Americans inform and amuse themselves."

"Radio would shape the country’s culture and its politics, for better or for worse."

"As with the secrecy of correspondence, the idea that certain businesses must be responsive to the public interest had a long heritage. It derived from a centuries-old distinction between companies that have strictly “private callings” and those that also have “public callings.”"

"“When, therefore, one devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest, he, in effect, grants to the public an interest in that use, and must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good.”"

"Because it deals in the intangible goods that shape the public mind — ideas and opinions, facts and fabrications — it is inherently political."

"Without any precedent to draw on, society had to figure out, more or less from scratch, how to accommodate the powerful new technology — how to tap its many benefits while curbing its destructive potential."

"Congress intended the FRC’s extensive rulemaking powers to be temporary. Legislators still assumed that once the various technical issues had been worked out, the nascent radio industry would essentially be able to regulate itself. That hope proved vain."

"“Perhaps no single area of communications policy has generated as much scholarly discourse, judicial analysis, and political debate over the course of the last seventy years as has that simple directive to regulate in the ‘public interest.’”"

"The public interest standard is more than just a legal principle. It is an ethical principle."

"The vagueness of the standard is necessary for a simple reason: public opinion changes as circumstances change."

"Frankfurter understood that the public interest standard, like the public interest itself, is not static but dynamic."

"Digitization, by enabling all forms of information to be transmitted through a common network, muddied the boundary between personal and public communications."

"A smartphone can serve as a mailbox, a telephone, a radio, and a TV — all at the same time."

"In a replay of what happened a hundred years ago, the combination of rapid technological advance and weak public oversight produced the state of confusion we find ourselves in today."

"A few large companies, free to set their own rules, wield control over public and private communications."

"Rather than promoting an informed public, social media has promoted polarization, extremism, and, all too often, ignorance."

"The common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others…. Even if he has chosen to give them expression, he generally retains the power to fix the limits of the publicity which shall be given them."

"On platforms where personal and public speech are intertwined, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the intent of the communicator can often be gauged through proxies such as numbers of followers, views, likes, or comments — measures that all the platforms track meticulously."

"It will never be possible to draw a bright line between personal and public speech on social media."

"They don’t change the fact that most social media content can, by dint of its intention or its reach, be categorized as either personal speech or public speech."

"Social media companies themselves routinely sort content into the two categories, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, as they seek to fine-tune their programming and boost their fortunes as broadcasters."

"The two businesses have very different characteristics, as we’ve seen, and they demand different kinds of oversight."

"First, it would extend the secrecy-of-correspondence doctrine to cover the personal communications that flow in so many forms online. Second, it would apply the public interest standard to online broadcasting, reinvigorating the FCC’s venerable oversight role."

"When transmitting personal speech, whether in the form of emails, text messages, video chats, or social media posts, Internet companies in general and social media companies in particular would be expected to act as common carriers."

"A 2019 Pew Research survey found that three-quarters of U.S. adults want greater government regulation of personal data, and a 2021 poll by Morning Consult showed that more than 80 percent of both Republicans and Democrats want Congress to stiffen data protection laws."

"“The receipt of information on the Internet,” the Court argued, “requires a series of affirmative steps more deliberate and directed than merely turning a dial.”"

"Businesses like Facebook and Google have exactly the kind of “uniquely pervasive presence,” to quote Justice Stevens again, that warrants strong public governance."

"As the dominant informational networks of the twenty-first century, they need to be accountable for the content they broadcast, whatever its source."

"The much-debated Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — one of the few parts of the law to survive court challenges — currently shields web companies from accountability for the material they allow to be posted online."

"The laissez-faire approach may have made sense in the web’s early days, when the future shape of digital broadcasting was impossible to foresee, but it’s counterproductive today."

"Social media companies, and those who produce content on their platforms, should operate not under a liability shield that isolates them from the public interest but under a set of rules that makes them responsive to the public interest."

"It was about making broadcasters, whether individuals, businesses, or other organizations, visible and accountable."

"we do need to bring the spirit of the common good back to broadcasting."

"Fortunately, history provides a precedent for using democratic processes and public institutions to govern media during a time of great upheaval. What’s needed now is the will of the people."