Jhaver et al. 2021 — Evaluating the effectiveness of deplatforming as a moderation strategy

What the study found

Jhaver, Boylston, Yang and Bruckman studied three high-profile influencers who were banned from Twitter — Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Owen Benjamin — drawing on a dataset of more than 49 million tweets. They found that removing the three accounts sharply cut how much the platform talked about them, and that the people who had engaged with them became both less active and less toxic after the bans. ^[1]

deplatforming significantly reduced the number of conversations about all three individuals on Twitter

^[1]

Why it matters here

This study is one of the most direct empirical tests of whether banning prominent figures actually changes online behaviour. It supplies measured, platform-level evidence — reduced conversation volume and lower supporter activity and toxicity — rather than assertion. That makes it central to does deplatforming work?, where it is cited as evidence that bans can dampen a figure's reach and the tone of their following, at least on the platform where the ban occurs.