This is a common misconception, but that's not what the law actually says. I'd encourage you to go read Section 230 yourself. It says a platform can't be held legally liable for:

"any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected"

The NYT and Fox News are publishers but they're only liable for the stuff they write and publish themselves. If someone on their comments section posts objectionable or illegal content they aren't liable for it. And they're free to moderate their comments section in any way they wish.

BTW consider the alternative if it wasn't this way. Activists could flood 2A message boards with "guns evil, ban them all" spam and the mods could do nothing to stop them lest they lose Section 230 protections. Trolls could harass users on forums for sensitive topics such as dealing with grief, cancer, PTSD or other traumas. Every online forum would become totally unusable.

At that point, whatever damage is being done won't be undone, but facebook can genuinely say it is not maintinaing editorial control.

But, they won't do that, because their business model is based on editorial control. There's no way around their culpability.

It's their platform, they can remove or restrict what people post in any way they want. If you don't like it you don't have to use it.

Every platform "polices" content. If they didn't every site would be 80%+ spam and full of porn and hate.