Can hate speech be banned online? Evidence from Reddit

Abstract: Is deplatforming effective in reducing toxicity on social media? To answer this question we study a change in content policy on a large social network Reddit in June 2020. The change led to a simultaneous ban of approximately 2000 forums containing hateful content, but not the users of these forums. We use the complete history of user activity on Reddit to examine the impact of the ban on the behaviour of affected users. Preliminary results suggest that, although on aggregate users of banned forums become less active, the effects are highly heterogeneous, with least active users posting 10% less after the ban, but the most active ones posting 7% more. Increased activity of “core users” is not associated with higher toxicity: instead, most active users of banned forums substitute away from ideologically similar non-banned communities, become more positive, and reduce their use of hate speech.