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One can argue when these terms were initially coined. But we do have hard data on when they became prevalent in the public mind. Look at the Google trends for "deplatforming"[1], "no platforming"[2] and "alt right"[3]. "No platforming" had some blips starting in the late 2000s, but begins rising significantly in 2015, "deplatforming" in January of 2016, and "alt right" in august of 2016. There is evidence to the claim that deplatforming (or at least, widespread interesting in deplatofrming or "no platforming") preceded widespread interest in the alt-right.

> The people stay, the community goes. Then, you look at the level of the material in other sub-communities on the site. That is what those studies did, and that is why they demonstrate causality.

Yes, but as I stated multiple times by now the key limitation here is that they only looked at the material on the same site. Site X bans Y (whether in full or in only some subforums). You observe a reduction of Y on the site. That's not evidence that this action reduced Y in society as a whole. There is a causal relationship between deplatforming and reduction of the deplatformed view on said platform. Nobody is disagreeing with that - most people would likely read such a statement and think "no kidding, Sherlock".

For example, pointing to the fact that when Reddit banned racist subreddits racist content on other subreddits were reduced is proof that banning racist subreddits reduced racist content on Reddit. This is not at all surprising, and is something most would call obvious. But to portray this as proof that banning racist subreddits reduces racist content in society as a whole is a very large misrepresentation. This study did not study the impact on society as a whole - only the forum that is carrying out the deplatforming.

And again, I do not attempt to claim the the correlation between the rise of deplatforming and the rise of the alt right is irrefutable proof that the former causes the latter. But claiming that the former helps prevents the latter is not backed up by the evidence we do have.

1. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=deplatfo...

2. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=no%20pla...

3. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=alt%20ri...




> One can argue when these terms were initially coined. But we do have hard data on when they became prevalent in the public mind. Look at the Google trends for "deplatforming"[1], "no platforming"[2] and "alt right"[3]. "No platforming" had some blips starting in the late 2000s, but begins rising significantly in 2015, "deplatforming" in January of 2016, and "alt right" in august of 2016. There is evidence to the claim that deplatforming (or at least, widespread interesting in deplatofrming or "no platforming") preceded widespread interest in the alt-right.

The terms themselves don't seem particularly relevant. The idea of deplatforming people has been around and practiced for a while. The alt-right dates back to at least Gamergate, and its roots in neoreaction, TRP, MGTOW, /pol/, etc can be traced back much further. I don't think Google trends really proves much here.

> Yes, but as I stated multiple times by now the key limitation here is that they only looked at the material on the same site. Site X bans Y (whether in full or in only some subforums). You observe a reduction of Y on the site. That's not evidence that this action reduced Y in society as a whole. There is a causal relationship between deplatforming and reduction of the deplatformed view on said platform. Nobody is disagreeing with that - most people would likely read such a statement and think "no kidding, Sherlock".

It's not tautological that that should happen. Remember, they're looking at the prevalence of that view elsewhere. It's not at all obvious that it should be the case that when you ban the 'Fat People Hate' subreddit, fat-shaming content elsewhere on reddit decreases.

It would be very hard to prove this effect on general social sentiment even for a site as big as reddit, because society is so much larger. Facebook might be big enough to have a measurable effect on society writ large, but their policing mechanism, and the internal organizational structure of Facebook doesn't really lend itself to these sorts of experiments.

> For example, pointing to the fact that when Reddit banned racist subreddits racist content on other subreddits were reduced is proof that banning racist subreddits reduced racist content on Reddit. This is not at all surprising, and is something most would call obvious. But to portray this as proof that banning racist subreddits reduces racist content in society as a whole is a very large misrepresentation.

It didn't just reduce the aggregate racist content on reddit. It reduced the aggregate racist content above and beyond the literal content that was removed. In other words, when they banned r/CoonTown, r/politics got less racist. That is not at all an obvious consequence.


Sure, it reduced toxic content "elsewhere" but that "elsewhere" is limited to the same space that is administered by the same authority. Banning /r/coontown may have made posters in /r/politics less toxic, likely because they witnessed the shift in moderation policies. Also because racist users likely stopped using the service for posting racist content. But you're acting as though this means this content wasn't posted at all. For all we know, this just displaced it to 4chan, Gab, or something else.

Again, I agree that banning racist subreddits led to a reduction of racist content across the board on Reddit. But you're treating this as proof that said bans reduced racist content in society as a whole, which is a baseless claim even with the aforementioned analysis of the impact on other subreddits.


I agree that it isn't absolute proof. It is possible that an effect like the one you described took place. But it isn't the only evidence. I'd direct you again to people like Alex Jones. I think it's extremely hard to argue that Alex Jones and his toxic brand of disinformation didn't benefit enormously from access to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. I think you'd be extremely hard pressed to argue that his reach has increased as a result of being de-platformed. You may be able to make the case that it has retrenched the support of his hardcore followers, but that is not the same thing as signal boosting his message in society at large.




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