You Can't Stay Here: The Efficacy of Reddit's 2015 Ban Examined Through Hate Speech
Abstract
In 2015, Reddit closed several subreddits-foremost among them r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown-due to violations of Reddit's anti-harassment policy. However, the effectiveness of banning as a moderation approach remains unclear: banning might diminish hateful behavior, or it may relocate such behavior to different parts of the site. We study the ban of r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown in terms of its effect on both participating users and affected subreddits. Working from over 100M Reddit posts and comments, we generate hate speech lexicons to examine variations in hate speech usage via causal inference methods. We find that the ban worked for Reddit. More accounts than expected discontinued using the site; those that stayed drastically decreased their hate speech usage-by at least 80%. Though many subreddits saw an influx of r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown "migrants," those subreddits saw no significant changes in hate speech usage. In other words, other subreddits did not inherit the problem. We conclude by reflecting on the apparent success of the ban, discussing implications for online moderation, Reddit and internet communities more broadly.
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Prior deplatforming research has reported toxicity rises following certain deplatforming actions.
“Some past studies of deplatforming have found that toxicity increases after some deplatforming events (Ali et al. 2021;Buntain et al. 2023;Chandrasekharan et al. 2017).”
From The Effects of Group Sanctions on Participation and Toxicity: Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Fediverse (2024) · cites this paper as Chandrasekharan et al. 2017
Defederation appears similar to individual and collective sanctions such as account banning, quarantine, and sub-community removal.
“In this sense, defederation appears similar to individual and collective sanctions analyzed in prior studies such as account banning, quarantine, and sub-community removal (Chandrasekharan et al. 2022(Chandrasekharan et al. , 2017;;Jhaver et al. 2021).”
From The Effects of Group Sanctions on Participation and Toxicity: Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Fediverse (2024) · cites this paper as Chandrasekharan et al. 2017
Some group-level sanctions have improved compliance with widely-held norms.
“Some of these group-level sanctions have even improved compliance with widely-held norms (Chandrasekharan et al. 2017).”
From The Effects of Group Sanctions on Participation and Toxicity: Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Fediverse (2024) · cites this paper as Chandrasekharan et al. 2017
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- Authors
- Chandrasekharan, E., Pavalanathan, U., Srinivasan, A., Glynn, A., Eisenstein, J., & Gilbert, E.
- Affiliations
- Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
- Emory University (US)
- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
- Venue
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
- Published
- 2017-12-06
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- CSCW
- Pages
- 1-22
- ISSN
- 2573-0142 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2774215862
- Cited by
- 390
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 38 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 51 · 2023: 51 · 2022: 64 · 2021: 57 · 2020: 36 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 25
- FWCI
- 13.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (R01GM112697-01)
- National Science Foundation (IIS-1553376, RI-1452443)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Keywords
- hate speech, online harassment, content moderation, Reddit, user attrition, anti-harassment policy, online communities
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