The article is reporting about a scientific study (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.00680v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.00680v1.pdf discussed in https://news.ycombin

The article is reporting about a scientific study (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.00680v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.00680v1.pdf discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9399090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9399090) that specifically talks about "future banned users" without asking why these users would be banned; The rest of the economist article is journalistic speculation. The study authors do report that there's a propensity for polarization, i.e., that "we find a community bias against FBUs: posts written later in an FBU’s life are more likely to be deleted, regardless of whether they are actually worse".