> because as a web developer I'd be dissuaded from investing much time on this due to an expectation of high legal costs to defend against libel claims.

Until one of the crusades to legislatively narrow or repeal Section 230 succeeds, that should be pretty complete protection against even a scintilla of a cognizable libel claim against the developer for user-submitted content.

States attempting criminalization of posting police related info are a bigger threat (while mostly blatantly federally unconstitutional, there's a significant risk of you being arrested, tried, convicted, and serving a sentence before you get that argument even taken up by a federal court.)