[Paper Review] Deplatforming Norm-Violating Influencers on Social Media Reduces Overall Online Attention Toward Them

Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Shagun Jhaver+3 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jan 2, 2024

Social Media and Politics4 citations

TL;DR

This study investigates the impact of deplatforming norm-violating influencers on overall online attention using a longitudinal, quasi-experimental approach across 165 deplatforming events involving 101 influencers. By analyzing Google Trends and Wikipedia pageviews as platform-agnostic measures of public attention, the authors find that deplatforming reduces online attention by 63% on Google and 43% on Wikipedia after 12 months, demonstrating a significant and sustained decline in public visibility.

ABSTRACT

From politicians to podcast hosts, online platforms have systematically banned (``deplatformed'') influential users for breaking platform guidelines. Previous inquiries on the effectiveness of this intervention are inconclusive because 1) they consider only few deplatforming events; 2) they consider only overt engagement traces (e.g., likes and posts) but not passive engagement (e.g., views); 3) they do not consider all the potential places users impacted by the deplatforming event might migrate to. We address these limitations in a longitudinal, quasi-experimental study of 165 deplatforming events targeted at 101 influencers. We collect deplatforming events from Reddit posts and then manually curate the data, ensuring the correctness of a large dataset of deplatforming events. Then, we link these events to Google Trends and Wikipedia page views, platform-agnostic measures of online attention that capture the general public's interest in specific influencers. Through a difference-in-differences approach, we find that deplatforming reduces online attention toward influencers. After 12 months, we estimate that online attention toward deplatformed influencers is reduced by -63% (95% CI [-75%,-46%]) on Google and by -43% (95% CI [-57%,-24%]) on Wikipedia. Further, as we study over a hundred deplatforming events, we can analyze in which cases deplatforming is more or less impactful, revealing nuances about the intervention. Notably, we find that both permanent and temporary deplatforming reduce online attention toward influencers; Overall, this work contributes to the ongoing effort to map the effectiveness of content moderation interventions, driving platform governance away from speculation.

Motivation & Objective

• To assess the long-term impact of deplatforming on overall online attention toward influencers, moving beyond platform-specific engagement metrics.
• To address limitations in prior research, including small-scale event analysis, reliance on overt engagement (e.g., likes), and failure to account for user migration to alternative platforms.
• To evaluate whether deplatforming reduces public visibility across the broader web ecosystem, using platform-agnostic attention metrics like Google Trends and Wikipedia pageviews.
• To identify contextual factors that influence the effectiveness of deplatforming, such as permanence of ban or influencer type.
• To contribute empirical evidence to inform platform governance and content moderation policy, moving beyond speculation toward data-driven decision-making.

Proposed method

• The study collects deplatforming events from Reddit discussions and manually curates a dataset of 165 events involving 101 influencers.
• It links each influencer to their Google Knowledge Graph identifier to extract search interest data from Google Trends.
• It uses Wikipedia pageview data as a complementary measure of public attention, capturing broader audience engagement.
• A difference-in-differences (DiD) causal inference framework is applied to estimate the causal effect of deplatforming on attention metrics over time.
• The analysis controls for pre-existing trends and compares attention trajectories of deplatformed influencers to matched control groups.
• The study accounts for migration by analyzing attention across the web, not just on the platform where deplatforming occurred.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 Does deplatforming lead to a measurable reduction in overall online attention toward norm-violating influencers?
• RQ2 How does the impact of deplatforming vary between permanent and temporary bans?
• RQ3 To what extent does user migration to alternative platforms (e.g., Gab, Rumble) offset the reduction in attention on mainstream platforms?
• RQ4 Are there differences in the effectiveness of deplatforming based on the influencer’s prior reach or audience type?
• RQ5 How do platform-agnostic metrics like Google Trends and Wikipedia pageviews compare to platform-specific engagement in capturing the broader impact of deplatforming?

Key findings

• After 12 months, online attention toward deplatformed influencers is reduced by 63% on Google Trends (95% CI [−75%, −46%]).
• On Wikipedia, online attention is reduced by 43% after 12 months (95% CI [−57%, −24%]).
• Both permanent and temporary deplatforming events result in significant and sustained reductions in overall online attention.
• The reduction in attention is observed across the broader web ecosystem, indicating that deplatforming effectively diminishes public visibility even when users migrate to alternative platforms.
• The study demonstrates that platform-agnostic attention metrics like Google Trends and Wikipedia pageviews are effective proxies for measuring the real-world impact of deplatforming.
• The findings suggest that deplatforming is most effective in reducing 'spontaneous' or incidental attention, rather than deliberate engagement from dedicated audiences.