Prominence Reduction versus Banning: An Empirical Investigation of Content Moderation Strategies in Online Platforms

Online platforms have adopted various types of content moderation strategies to combat antisocial behaviors such as verbal aggression. This study focuses on two types of strategies: group prominence reduction and banning. This study aims to provide a holistic picture of all downstream effects of these strategies. Additionally, we assess the differential effects of content moderation on multihoming versus non-multihoming users. Preliminary findings indicate that prominence reduction strategies applied to a problematic group have the adverse effect of increasing verbal aggression in outside spaces. Banning strategies differentially impact multihoming versus non-multihoming users. These findings have important implications, as they show that group prominence reduction strategies produce negative spillover effects, and the behavior of multihoming users on multiple external platforms, and whether our results generalize across multiple contexts