https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/924295
News Release 3-Aug-2021
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Binghamton University
Users banned from social platforms go elsewhere with increased toxicity, according to a new study featuring researchers from Binghamton University, State University of New York.
When people act like jerks on social media, one permanent response is to ban them from posting again. Take away the digital megaphone, the theory goes, and the hurtful or dishonest messages from those troublemakers won’t post a problem there anymore.
What happens after that, though? Where do those who have been “deplatformed” go, and how does it affect their behavior in future?
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Researchers developed a method to identify accounts belonging to the same person on different platforms and found that being banned on Reddit or Twitter led those users to join alternate platforms such as Gab or Parler where the content moderation is more lax.
Also among the findings is that, although users who move to those smaller platforms have a potentially reduced audience, they exhibit an increased level of activity and toxicity than they did previously.
“You can’t just ban these people and say, ‘Hey, it worked.’ They don’t disappear,” Blackburn said. “They go off into other places. It does have a positive effect on the original platform, but there’s also some degree of amplification or worsening of this type of behavior elsewhere.”
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3 comments:
i was banned from Daily Kos about 5 years back; did you detect the increase in my toxicity at the time?
Why were you banned. I find your comments thoughtful and polite, even when I occasionally don't agree with them.
during the 2016 Democratic primary season, i posted an Anonymous video that a friend sent me that used rough language and called Hillary Clinton a "Zionist bitch", so i was banned for "overt misogyny and antisemitism"...oddly enough, while i was banned, they left the video up because they have a policy not to remove offending content...
i had been reposting my economic and energy blog material there for three years and answering questions that anyone might have, but since i was cut off without anyone even checking the entirety of my contribution to their site, i decided not to appeal their decision...
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