This excerpt is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. 

A key law that protects free speech online is celebrating its 30th birthday under withering fire from critics on both sides of the political aisle.  

Even in stable times, rolling back protection would be foolhardy and harmful. In a moment when the Executive Branch and federal agencies seek to censor speech online, it could be a nail in democracy’s coffin. 

That’s why it’s so shocking to see bipartisan support for either repealing or sunsetting Section 230 amid today’s deeply divided and tumultuous policy landscape. But a bipartisan bad idea is still a bad idea. 

Enacted in 1996, Section 230 — originally part of the Communications Decency Act — states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 

A bipartisan Congress passed Section 230, which provides limited civil immunity to online intermediaries that host users’ speech, because it recognized that promoting more user speech online outweighed potential harms. When harmful speech occurs, it’s the speaker that should be held responsible, not the service that hosts the speech. The law also protects social platforms when they remove posts that are obscene or violate the services’ own........

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