In really broad terms

Platform: user is liable for their speech if it’s something like incitement. Company cannot censor or edit the user’s use of the website. Just like how ISPs can’t throttle you for looking at breitbart instead of cnn.

Publisher: company can monitor and curate your content and posts if it’s not within their community guidelines. Publisher is somewhat responsible for incitement or death threats etc. kinda like how CNN is got their ass sued for the sandman

Edit: you can’t be both a neutral service/platform provider and curate content as you see fit.

It depends on how it's changed, but you're thinking the right way. Platforms do need protections. They would get sued out of existence in a matter of days without protections or would shut down themselves quickly. It's not the way most people think like they can't cross over to publishing because if the protections are repealed, they will publish more and host a lot less content.

The issue is that as platforms, they must remain platforms and not curate or censor content. The protections are there so that they can and should remain neutral and remain as platforms. Publishers are on the hook for posting illegal content because it is essentially their choice whereas a user in a platform would be the accountable party and the platform has indemnity.

The laws weren't written anticipating what is happening now. The laws assumed that platforms would not take on publisher roles. Reform may be able to force them to stop curating, creating, and supressing content without causing them to shut down, but the legislation must be good. An internet bill of rights that extends freedom of speech to internet laws has been floated by a few people, and I think it's probably the best way to prevent censorship. Everything else could be fixed with minor legislation.

The bottom line is if you want protection don’t arbitrarily or unfairly censor. You wanna arbitrarily or unfairly censor why should you be protected.

Fuck with the content then you should own it.

The problem with Section 230 is it leaves a singularity sized loophole, up for the highest bidder. It's been a while now and the market is better understood so that loophole needs to be retroactively closed off and turned into more of a Right as was the spirit of the other parts.

It's kind of like if 1A had "and so forth" at the end which would obviously be intended for how citizens are free to associate, but instead was used to end "hate speech."