# Spillover of Antisocial Behavior from Fringe Platforms: The Unintended Consequences of Community Banning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.09803 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.09803/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 77 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Sep 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [node2vec: Scalable Feature Learning for Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00653/) (2016)
- [The Pushshift Reddit Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08435/) (2020)
- [Ex Machina: Personal Attacks Seen at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.08914/) (2016)
- [On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.12512/) (2018)
- [Anyone Can Become a Troll: Causes of Trolling Behavior in Online Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.01119/) (2017)
- [Quantifying social organization and political polarization in online platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.00590/) (2020)
- [Control, Generate, Augment: A Scalable Framework for Multi-Attribute Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14983/) (2020)
- [Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.00680/) (2015)
- [Do Platform Migrations Compromise Content Moderation? Evidence from r/The_Donald and r/Incels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.10397/) (2020)
- [Make Reddit Great Again: Assessing Community Effects of Moderation Interventions on r/The_Donald](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.06455/) (2022)
- [Measuring and Characterizing Hate Speech on News Websites](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.07926/) (2020)
- [The Web Centipede: Understanding How Web Communities Influence Each Other Through the Lens of Mainstream and Alternative News Sources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.06947/) (2017)
- [Pathways through Conspiracy: The Evolution of Conspiracy Radicalization through Engagement in Online Conspiracy Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10729/) (2022)
- [From Welcome New Gabbers to the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting: The Evolution of Gab](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11278/) (2019)
- [Mobilizing the Trump Train: Understanding Collective Action in a Political Trolling Community](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00429/) (2018)
- [Comparing the Language of QAnon-related content on Parler, Gab, and Twitter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11118/) (2021)
- [Disentangling Active and Passive Cosponsorship in the U.S. Congress](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09674/) (2022)
- [Soros, Child Sacrifices, and 5G: Understanding the Spread of Conspiracy Theories on Web Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02187/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [People Make Better Edits: Measuring the Efficacy of LLM-Generated Counterfactually Augmented Data for Harmful Language Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01270/) (2023)
- [Valid Survey Simulations with Limited Human Data: The Roles of Prompting, Fine-Tuning, and Rectification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11408/) (2025)
- [The Pluralistic Moral Gap: Understanding Judgment and Value Differences between Humans and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17216/) (2025)
- [Understanding Online Migration Decisions Following the Banning of Radical Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04765/) (2022)
- [Stranger Danger! Cross-Community Interactions with Fringe Users Increase the Growth of Fringe Communities on Reddit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.12186/) (2023)
- [CrowdCounter: A benchmark type-specific multi-target counterspeech dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01400/) (2024)
- [Estimating Causal Effects of Text Interventions Leveraging LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21474/) (2024)
- [ACTI at EVALITA 2023: Overview of the Conspiracy Theory Identification Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06954/) (2023)
- [Structure and dynamics of growing networks of Reddit threads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04085/) (2024)
- [Meat-Free Day Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions but Poses Challenges for Customer Retention and Adherence to Dietary Guidelines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02899/) (2025)
- [UPB @ ACTI: Detecting Conspiracies using fine tuned Sentence Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16275/) (2023)
- [Carrot, stick, or both? Price incentives for sustainable food choice in competitive environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13174/) (2025)
- [Beyond the Rabbit Hole: Mapping the Relational Harms of QAnon Radicalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.17658/) (2026)
- [From Web(logs) to Web(AI): Questions, Platforms, and Methods across Twenty Editions of ICWSM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.00205/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Online platforms face pressure to keep their communities civil and respectful. Thus, the bannings of problematic online communities from mainstream platforms like Reddit and Facebook are often met with enthusiastic public reactions. However, this policy can lead users to migrate to alternative fringe platforms with lower moderation standards and where antisocial behaviors like trolling and harassment are widely accepted. As users of these communities often remain co-active across mainstream and fringe platforms, antisocial behaviors may spill over onto the mainstream platform. We study this possible spillover by analyzing around 70,000 users from three banned communities that migrated to fringe platforms: r/The_Donald, r/GenderCritical, and r/Incels. Using a difference-in-differences design, we contrast co-active users with matched counterparts to estimate the causal effect of fringe platform participation on users' antisocial behavior on Reddit. Our results show that participating in the fringe communities increases users' toxicity on Reddit (as measured by Perspective API) and involvement with subreddits similar to the banned community -- which often also breach platform norms. The effect intensifies with time and exposure to the fringe platform. In short, we find evidence for a spillover of antisocial behavior from fringe platforms onto Reddit via co-participation.