Reddit quarantined: can changing platform affordances reduce hateful material online?

This paper studies the efficacy of the Reddit’s quarantine, increasingly implemented in the platform as a means of restricting and reducing misogynistic and other hateful material. Using the case studies of r/TheRedPill and r/Braincels, the paper argues the quarantine successfully cordoned off affec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Internet Policy Review
Main Author: Simon Copland
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society 2020-10-01
Subjects:
Online Access:https://policyreview.info/node/1516
Description
Summary:This paper studies the efficacy of the Reddit’s quarantine, increasingly implemented in the platform as a means of restricting and reducing misogynistic and other hateful material. Using the case studies of r/TheRedPill and r/Braincels, the paper argues the quarantine successfully cordoned off affected subreddits and associated hateful material from the rest of the platform. It did not, however, reduce the levels of hateful material within the affected spaces. Instead many users reacted by leaving Reddit for less regulated spaces, with Reddit making this hateful material someone else’s problem. The paper argues therefore that the success of the quarantine as a policy response is mixed.
ISSN:2197-6775