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This article suggests otherwise. > What they found was encouraging for this strategy of reducing unwanted activity on a site like Reddit: > Post-ban, hate spe

This article suggests otherwise. > What they found was encouraging for this strategy of reducing unwanted activity on a site like Reddit: > Post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent. Members of banned communities left Reddit at significantly higher rates than control groups. > Migration was common, both to similar subreddits (i.e. overtly racist ones) and tangentially related ones (r/The_Donald). However, within those communities, hate speech did not reliably increase, although there were slight bumps as the invaders encountered and tested new rules and moderators. https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-controversial-ban-of-its-most-toxic-subreddits-actually-worked/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-contro...

vidarh 7y ago
An interesting round of "invaders encountering and testing new rules" was when far right mods tried a takeover of /r/libertarian. /r/libertarian has always had a level of interesting with groups like /r/The_Donald, and has been full of right wing memes, but is also full of left wing libertarians (the original libertarian - Joseph Déjacque, was an anarcho-communist - left and right libertarian mostly split along the view on whether enforcement property rights are an unjustified state intervention leading to loss of liberty, or a necessity to ensure liberty), and new mods were added that started banning left-wing libertarians all over the place, even for things like just mentioning Joseph Déjacque. Amusingly, they went too far, and the original founder of the sub came back, revoked their mod privileges and put in place a new "head moderator" who was an anarcho-communist, so it backfired spectacularly. Though the new head moderator did take care to appoint moderators that represented a cross-section of the community, and things went somewhat back to normal, the explicit support inherent in having a left-wing head mod did embolden a lot of left wing users of the sub to post more commentary countering the right wing posts to a greater extent.

vidarh 7y ago

An interesting round of "invaders encountering and testing new rules" was when far right mods tried a takeover of /r/libertarian. /r/libertarian has always had a level of interesting with groups like /r/The_Donald, and has been full of right wing memes, but is also full of left wing libertarians (the original libertarian - Joseph Déjacque, was an anarcho-communist - left and right libertarian mostly split along the view on whether enforcement property rights are an unjustified state intervention leading to loss of liberty, or a necessity to ensure liberty), and new mods were added that started banning left-wing libertarians all over the place, even for things like just mentioning Joseph Déjacque. Amusingly, they went too far, and the original founder of the sub came back, revoked their mod privileges and put in place a new "head moderator" who was an anarcho-communist, so it backfired spectacularly. Though the new head moderator did take care to appoint moderators that represented a cross-section of the community, and things went somewhat back to normal, the explicit support inherent in having a left-wing head mod did embolden a lot of left wing users of the sub to post more commentary countering the right wing posts to a greater extent.