Does Deplatforming Work? Unintended Consequences of banning far-right content creators from social media

52 Pages Posted: 30 Jan 2022 Last revised: 3 Oct 2022

See all articles by Danny Klinenberg

Danny Klinenberg

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Date Written: January 27, 2022

Abstract

Social media has become an outlet for extremists to fundraise and organize on, potentially leading to deadly externalities. While governments deliberate on how to regulate this challenge, some social media companies have removed creators of offensive content –deplatforming. I estimate the effects of deplatforming on revenue and viewership, using variation in the timing of removals across two video-streaming companies- YouTube, and its far-right competitor, Bitchute. I construct a novel dataset including Bitcoin wallets linking YouTube and Bitchute accounts for 79 far-right content creators, including propagandists for violent domestic extremist movements. Being deplatformed on Youtube results in a 30% increase in weekly Bitcoin revenue and a 50% increase in viewership on Bitchute. This increase in Bitchute activity accounts for about 65% of the estimated foregone revenue and 5.9% of viewership lost from YouTube, implying a negative net effect of deplatforming.

Keywords: deplatforming; social media

JEL Classification: J00

Suggested Citation

Klinenberg, Danny, Does Deplatforming Work? Unintended Consequences of banning far-right content creators from social media (January 27, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4019767 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4019767

Danny Klinenberg (Contact Author)

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) ( email )

United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/view/dannyklinenberg/home

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