That's basically saying that there should be no online public forums for discourse, anywhere, because the scale means they can't be properly moderated.

And to take this further: it also means that there should be no right to public assembly, because you can't moderate what's said there either.

No, not at all. The argument is that since Facebook moderates their site according to their own arbitrary standards, it's not a place for public assembly but a publication that Facebook is responsible for as if it were a newspaper. If they did not moderate, it would not apply.

Mastodon can help here, because it is not a single entity, but a federation with independent moderations.

Indeed. Distributed design is the intelligent way to go when it comes to mass communications systems. Too much centralization leads to many such problems

How so?

Facebook exercises editorial control on their website. That makes them its publisher and thus responsible for all content.

If they cannot publish Facebook responsibly, they cannot publish it period.

According to what legislation? Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act states [0]:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Exercising editorial control does not make them liable for all content [1]:

Courts have consistently held that exercising traditional editorial functions over user-submitted content, such as deciding whether to publish, remove, or edit material, is immunized under Section 230.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants interactive online services of all types, including blogs, forums, and listservs, broad immunity from tort liability so long as the information at issue is provided by a third party.

See [2] for some examples of online activities that are covered.

[0] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

[1] http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/immunity-online-publishers-u...

[2] http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/online-activities-covered-se...

> According to what legislation?

The duty to be responsible has nothing to do with legislation.

There's no reason a Facebook-like experience couldn't be developed using distributed technology like SMTP and HTTP. It's just that no one has garnered enough traction yet.

How would that solve the issue of editorial control being impractical? It would make it strictly MORE impractical

It would mostly make the question moot. In a federated system, there is no worry about a single entity exerting editorial control. Every instance can set their own policies for content and who they wish to federate with. Individual users can find or setup an instance that meets their own needs and requirements.

I agree, but what’s the relevance of this to my comment?

Too Big To Not Fail