Deplatforming did not decrease Parler users’ activity on fringe social media

Abstract

Online platforms have banned (“deplatformed”) influencers, communities, and even entire websites to reduce content deemed harmful. Deplatformed users often migrate to alternative platforms, which raises concerns about the effectiveness of deplatforming. Here, we study the deplatforming of Parler, a fringe social media platform, between 2020 January 11 and 2021 February 25, in the aftermath of the US Capitol riot. Using two large panels that capture longitudinal user-level activity across mainstream and fringe social media content (N = 112, 705, adjusted to be representative of US desktop and mobile users), we find that other fringe social media, such as Gab and Rumble, prospered after Parler’s deplatforming. Further, the overall activity on fringe social media increased while Parler was offline. Using a difference-in-differences analysis (N = 996), we then identify the causal effect of deplatforming on active Parler users, finding that deplatforming increased the probability of daily activity across other fringe social media in early 2021 by 10.9 percentage points (pp) (95% CI [5.9 pp, 15.9 pp]) on desktop devices, and by 15.9 pp (95% CI [10.2 pp, 21.7 pp]) on mobile devices, without decreasing activity on fringe social media in general (including Parler). Our results indicate that the isolated deplatforming of a major fringe platform was ineffective at reducing overall user activity on fringe social media.

Gateways to White Nationalism: Leaders’ Strategic Online Rhetoric and Follower Engagement

“…One popular tool to counter extremists' use of online platforms to propagandize and recruit followers has been to ban or deplatform particularly prominent and hateful accounts (Thomas and Wahedi 2023). These bans often have the unintended consequences of pushing extremists (and their followers) to various fringe platforms where they can be less easily monitored by both policy-makers and researchers and, on which, users are exposed to more and more extreme content (Horta Ribeiro et al 2023;Klinenberg 2023;Mitts 2021). For example, in response to deplatforming efforts by Twitter, many on the "alt-right," including various white nationalist leaders, created new accounts on sites like Gab (Jasser et al 2023;Mitts 2021) or Telegram (Urman and Katz 2022).…”