FWIW, Section 230 was added primarily so that ISPs and hosting providers wouldn't be liable for content on their sites given that social media as we know it today basically didn't exist.

My understanding was the origins of section 230 were because of a couple of lawsuits that targetted ISPs for content that users posted on their services.

One company moderated their content, they were found liable for libel in user content in court. The other company did not moderate their content, they were not found liable for their user content. Anecdotally one of these services was seen as the good one and the other as the crappy one because of their moderation policies.

While social media didn't exist at the time in its current form, I'd argue this is still very relevant today. Without section 230 websites would only be able to moderate for illegal content, and there's a mountain of stuff you wouldn't want to see online that isn't technically illegal, and a lot of people who will try to put it in front of you if given the oppurtunity.

Right. Compuserve and Prodigy. Compuserve didn't moderate and Prodigy did.

The concern is that absent Section 230, a provider needs to either be (almost) totally hands-off or they have to strictly moderate (which isn't really viable for the modern web and social media).

That's definitely a concern I share, I manage a couple of work related servers that are miniscule in scale compared to social media companies, and the quantity of attempted spam/FUD/astroturfing they receive would render them pointless cesspools if we couldn't just block it