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To me I think the solution is let them pick whether they want to be editors or infrastructure.
Under the first amendment you can sue for libel but social media is protected from that. You can either say edit (like Reddit on anything trans) or you can’t edit and you are protected like your the mailman.
It does get more difficult since preventing trolling behavior etc is necessary.
And then you probably need a scale/size test. Places like the motte, the moderators of a sub, someone’s personal blog (marginal Revolution) gets protection. Reddit itself couldn’t do content moderation. The moderators could. And if I liked the subject of a sub but not the moderation I could create TheMotte2, or Chicago2 etc.
The problem with your model is that the moderators would themselves be subject to liability for anyone who posts on their sub. Since mods are generally working for free, it's a pretty tough sell to take on that amount of risk. At some point, any moderated forum (and I use that term loosely to include things like talk radio) is going to have someone who is on the hook for libel by sole virtue of their moderation duties. At that point, the only way you'd get to have any kind of discussion online would be through ultra-moderated forums hosted by outfits like The New York Times who screen every comment and only post stuff that meets a certain standard, much like with letters to the editor. It may make for a more interesting discussion, but good luck getting your views across. Having a discussion like we have on here would be hell if we had to wait for some paid employee to preapprove everything we wrote, and good luck posting on nights and weekends.
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