Alex Jones Forced Social Media to Make a Choice

Social media sites have a problem. They want to be open to all, to fulfill their higher-order goals of “connecting the world” or whatever and their lower-order goals of “making money.” But many have gotten so full of Nazis, conspiracy theorists and other horrible people/bots that they have become a big drag for everybody else. That helps explain why Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Snap Inc. reported disappointing user-growth numbers recently, writes Shira Ovide. All three suffered in the short term as they tried to pretty up the user experience. But the numbers were weakening even before that:

Notably, Facebook (but not Twitter) joined Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube in banning screamy conspiracy-theorist/grieving-parent-horror show Alex Jones. He is objectively awful. But none of the tech giants that tossed him were willing to spell out exactly why he’s terrible, raising questions about how seriously they will police such people, Bloomberg’s editors write. If they don’t, then user growth might keep slowing down. If they do, then they’ll limit their growth anyway. But that may be a fair price for maturity.