Does Content Moderation Lead Users Away from Fringe Movements? Evidence from a Recovery Community

Abstract

Online platforms have sanctioned individuals and communities associated with ‘fringe’ movements linked to hate speech, violence, and terrorism — but can these sanctions contribute to the abandonment of these movements? Here, we investigate this question through the lens of r/exredpill, a recovery community on Reddit meant to help individuals leave movements within the Manosphere, a conglomerate of fringe Web-based movements focused on men’s issues. We conduct an observational study on the impact of sanctioning some of Reddit’s largest Manosphere communities on the activity levels and user influx of r/exredpill, the largest associated recovery subreddit. We find that banning a related radical community positively affects participation in r/exredpill in the period following the ban. Yet, quarantining the community, a softer moderation intervention, yields no such effects. We show that the effect induced by banning a radical community is stronger than for some of the widely discussed real-world events related to the Manosphere and that moderation actions against the Manosphere do not cause a spike in toxicity or malicious activity in r/exredpill. Overall, our findings suggest that content moderation acts as a deradicalization catalyst.