Limiting distribution to filter out what you don't want to rise to the top has the same effect as explicitly picking winners.

Think of it like shooting the tires of all the cars you want to lose in a race. Sure you didn't push the winner across the finish line, but you made it damn near impossible for anyone else to even get there.

Yeah, but that's still not editorial control. And maybe we do actually want Twitter to pick some winners. I don't think the platform needs any more death threats, Russian-backed misinformation campaigns or other bullshit.

What if Russian missinormation is a Russian misinformation campaigne to induce paranoia and there are no actual misinformation ...

How about a straight forward algorithm for the feed instead of some hugely adbiased mess.

And this is exactly what social media does all the time, or rather their recommendation algorithms. Which, for some reason, is no problem at all. Now that the bias of these algorithms is changing, also by directly intervening, it is a big problem.

if a news network with a 1B viewers only gave free airtime to one side, it would clearly be in violation of campaign finance laws, among others

I don't think so. You could perhaps make an argument that banning all NY Post articles would be distribution control, although even then I'm skeptical. But if I picked up a physical copy of the New York Post, and found that the newsstand had snipped just this one article out with a pair of scissors, I'd call that an unambiguous act of editorial control and censorship.