Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not true. The default state of US law was that those who published without moderation were protected, and those that did moderate were not. Section 230 was created specifically because publishers who moderated user generated comments had been successfully sued for defamation [0]. Section 230 did not preserve any rights at all, it created entirely new ones. Companies were previously able to enjoy common carrie…
Congress couldn’t possibly imagine that Google would exist when they passed Section 230, because Google probably wouldn’t exist without Section 230. Section 230 is generally credited with helping birth the modern Internet, without Section 230 the Internet would still look like it did in the 1980s; small and non-commercial.
Like any other regulation, it harms small businesses disproportionately to the costs it imposes on large ones. There are plenty of examples of regulations that are appropriate to apply to large businesses, but much less appropriate to apply to small ones. Luckily, this incredibly old problem has been solved many times over through the idea of having regulations apply to companies after they reach a certain size. There is little harm to society in allowing small content distributors full editorial control over their distribution channels. There is significant harm to society in allowing that same level of control to entities which control an enormous majority of modern content distribution.
This trope that "the internet wouldn't exist without Section 230" is just an overused excuse that people peddle out to distract from the fact that regardless of how important it was in 1996, as the internet has changed, this law is now responsible for an entirely new category of very serious problems, that really weren't envisioned at the time it was written. It also ignores the fact that these problems can be easily fixed without removing the elements of it which have been beneficial to the growth of online services.