Eighteen long years ago, a young man named Jack traded in his youth for some magic beans. Jack planted those beans and, before long, a beanstalk would grow from the ground, pierce the clouds and stretch into the sky.

Upon climbing the beanstalk, Jack found a castle laden with riches beyond his wildest dreams.It seemed too good to be true. And, as it turns out, it was.

Jack didn’t expect that a formidable foe would find him: a giant named Alex. This giant was so mean and so vicious that he was banished from almost every other castle. He harassed, threatened and cursed everyone in his path. Jack, frightened by the prospect of removing this giant, made him a deal instead: if you leave me alone to collect my riches, you can stay as long as you want.

The giant’s conspiracies became more far flung. The harassment campaigns more intense. Jackasked that the giant stop harassing everyone for one week. He then embarked on a press tour explaining why it was important for everyone to hear what the giant had to say.

Now, the giant has returned to Jack’s castle: Twitter.

Twitter suspends Infowars' Alex Jones for abuse Read more

One week ago, Jack Dorsey effectively gave Alex Jones, a conspiracy-peddling hate monger a slap on the wrist and a license to continue to use his platform as he has for the last several years: to harass the parents of kindergartners killed at Sandy Hook, to paint Las Vegas shooting victims as actors and to threaten the special counsel. It will probably serve not as a deterrent, but an accelerant.

In the week leading up to this suspension, while Apple, Spotify, YouTube and Facebook finally admitted that Jones had been broken their clear terms of service, Jack Dorsey demurred. While his reluctance to simply jump on the bandwagon should be respected, it became increasingly clear through his many contortions that Alex Jones had indeed broken the Twitter terms of service as well. Many, many times. And yet, Dorsey refused to enforce his own policies, banning him as the other companies had.

In an age when social media companies are trying to find the line between what is appropriate on their platforms and what is not, what can be monetized and what can’t, what they should be responsible for and what they shouldn’t, one thing remains absolutely clear: bad people will use their platforms to do bad things and, if the tide is not stemmed, if their rules aren’t enforced, then those bad people will multiply.

It’s not like this hasn’t happened to Twitter before. In the very recent past, they found themselves overrun with racism, foreign political influence and harassment while those who have attempted to follow the rules felt alienated. A platform that admits to wrongdoing but won’t correct it is a clear target for anyone looking to take advantage of lenient policies.

This doesn’t get better, it only gets worse.

Yet, as evidenced by Jones’s return to Twitter, Dorsey remains stubbornly idealistic that not even people who intend to do harm could possibly do any damage to his utopian dream of a town square where everyone gets a voice (and the Twitter valuation stays high). He seems to be intent on ignoring the rules that his company established to keep the discourse safe for both the people who use it and for the advertisers that sell to them, who have already expressed their reticence to be juxtaposed with anything inflammatory. Jack also doesn’t seem to comprehend that harassment is actually the biggest barrier to free speech, that conspiracies spread on his platform cause damage to people off his platform and that voices that spout hate are always louder than the voices that look to challenge them. Dorsey’s dream has become a nightmare for many of the people who inhabit it.

If Jack is going to keep people and the advertisers that want to reach them on his platform, he is going to have to sacrifice a bit of his original idealistic vision for his company and, yes, some of the golden eggs that have come with it. He can’t hold the line for long, as the people who use Twitter for good will soon tire of the caustic nature of the discourse coming from those who want to use it for evil.

Yes, the giant is back again and his behavior will inevitably get worse, but it is not too late for Jack to do something about it. Even if it requires chopping down his precious beanstalk.

He just has to get his head out of the clouds first.