Weathering and weaponizing the #TwitterPurge: Digital content moderation and the dimensions of deplatforming

Abstract

Since 2016, news outlets across the political spectrum have increased coverage of social media content moderation and given the term “deplatforming” unprecedented mainstream prominence. This discourse has emphasized individual deplatforming; the process by which an individual’s account on a platform is suspended, disallowing their access to the platform’s user base and services. However, this individual emphasis draws attention away from community deplatforming, which is of primary significance. Deplatforming functions as active moderation. Beyond individual deplatforming, we must recognize incremental deplatforming – cumulatively affecting entire communities over a span of time – and implosive deplatforming – instantaneously erasing entire platforms, websites, and services.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.