Title

Does Deplatforming Work? Unintended consequences of banning far-right content creators

Author(s)

Danny Klinenberg Danny Klinenberg (University of California, Santa Barbara )

Abstract

Social media has become an outlet for extremists to fundraise and organize on, potentially leading to deadly consequences. 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.

Creation Date

2022-10

Section URL ID

Paper Number

31

URL

https://esoc.princeton.edu/WP31

File Function

Jel

L86;

Keyword(s)

Suppress

false

Series

12