They honestly didn't have to abandon that. They should have told the complainers to just suck it up, and this is how editing works.
Editing means people are going to be unhappy. You are taking a certain viewpoint, and are literally filtering out incompatible expressions. The people that get edited out, they'll get mad, but they'll have to deal with it, like the millions of other people that get edited out by various editors around the world and deal with it appropriately.
Facebook tried to have it all, but advertisers only want something specific.