Copland 2020 — Reddit quarantined: can changing platform affordances reduce hateful materials online?

What the study found

Copland examined what happened to r/TheRedPill, a subreddit of roughly 300,000 subscribers, after Reddit placed it under quarantine on 28 September 2018. Activity fell to about half of its pre-quarantine level, yet the misogynistic character of the submissions that remained barely moved — 24.78 per cent of submissions before the quarantine versus 25.58 per cent afterwards — while moderators directed subscribers toward external, less-moderated platforms. ^[1]

activity levels dropped to approximately one half of pre-quarantine levels, but those who remained did not change their language

^[1]

Why it matters here

The study speaks to how a platform's moderation choices affect a "red pill" community. It indicates that the quarantine cut the subreddit's overall reach without softening the views of the users who stayed, and that the most committed were pointed toward spaces with fewer controls. That mixed outcome informs the question of whether most red-pill followers are dangerous, where the finding helps distinguish a shrinking, self-selecting core from the wider audience a platform reaches before it intervenes.