TLDR: social media bans may reduce extremist content on a platform, but they push the issue somewhere else. They make it "someone else's problem".
https://twitter.com/PolicyR/status/1348936675150409730
One thing to note is that this research is about relatively low-profile bans on Reddit. The ban of Donald Trump is much more serious and is leading to literally hundreds of thousands of people moving to platforms like Gab. It moves these platforms away from the fringes.
While not every Trump fan will move to Gab or Parler (if it comes back online), many many will. His reach overall will decrease, but those people who do move will encounter more extreme places.
Furthermore if these platforms become more mainstream then more people will start to access them organically. They may become places not just for the already-committed.
This btw has nothing to do whether it was the right decision to make on principle (I don't think so, but that's a debate for another thread), but what the effects of these decisions are on the web.
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