When I say section 230 it’s actually shorthand for a much bigger tangle of rules: the CDA, the DMCA, SESTA/FOSTA, 18 USC 2258A and sometimes even 2257 regulatory compliance, and I’m probably missing a bunch.

Basically, if somebody posts illegal material on your site, be it copyrighted material, underage stuff, defamation, true threats, pro-terrorism stuff, advertisement of sexual services, revenge porn, snuff, etc you are not on the hook for that stuff in either civil or criminal courts as long as you jump through some very specific hoops both ahead of time and after if and when you become aware or should have become aware of such material (except the sexual services thing, which is a specific carve out due to sesta and fosta. Plus what qualifies for advertisement of sexual services can be a tricky issue.)

These hoops are very specific, and your jump through them can be triggered in a number of different ways, and both the hoops and the triggers can be moving targets depending on recent interpretations of the rules, court precedent, etc. Some people think that this is not real because a lot of places are able to skate under the radar for a long time which breeds a false sense of complacency, but as soon as the feds come a-knocking you better have all your papers in order or they drop the hammer on you. This can include both massive civil and criminal liabilities depending on the specific nature of the content and where it comes from.

And this isn’t even including any of the credit card compliance stuff, which means if you want to take donations or payments to your platform using any service that takes credit cards there are extremely onerous burdens of record-keeping and content management you need to follow well over and above anything the government requires.

Your “producing, looking for, or storing” conditions are not correct. Producing, obviously, yes, on a number of different levels. Looking for, actually no, you’re allowed to look for all you want. It’s if you find it that you’re in trouble, but the looking itself is fine. I mean it’ll be exhibit 2 in the criminal case against you because it proves intent, but if you look but don’t find you’re actually ok in most cases. “Storing” is very complicated. Did you know that you’re storing it? If you did, did you report it? If you did, how are you storing it, who has access to it, when did you report it, who did you report it to, and what format was your report? If you didn’t know, should you have known? Did someone report it to you? Etc etc etc.

TL;DR: GET A GOOD LAWYER AND DO WHAT THEY SAY.

Re: your afghan example, the short answer is yes, because the US government has jurisdiction over you as a US person. Even if you’re hosting the material in Afghanistan, if you have direct control over it then it is your material. Now from a practical point of view, getting an Afghan ISP to cooperate with an FBI subpoena may be a pretty tall order, but always remember that the feds have effectively unlimited resources and unlimited time to crush you like a bug if they want to.