# Understanding Online Migration Decisions Following the Banning of Radical Communities

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04765 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04765/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Dec 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [node2vec: Scalable Feature Learning for Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00653/) (2016)
- [The Pushshift Reddit Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08435/) (2020)
- [On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.12512/) (2018)
- [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)
- [Do Platform Migrations Compromise Content Moderation? Evidence from r/The_Donald and r/Incels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.10397/) (2020)
- [Spillover of Antisocial Behavior from Fringe Platforms: The Unintended Consequences of Community Banning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.09803/) (2022)
- [Measuring and Characterizing Hate Speech on News Websites](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.07926/) (2020)
- [Pathways through Conspiracy: The Evolution of Conspiracy Radicalization through Engagement in Online Conspiracy Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10729/) (2022)
- [An Ordinal Latent Variable Model of Conflict Intensity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03971/) (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)
- ["I Can't Keep It Up." A Dataset from the Defunct Voat.co News Aggregator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05933/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Stranger Danger! Cross-Community Interactions with Fringe Users Increase the Growth of Fringe Communities on Reddit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.12186/) (2023)
- [ACTI at EVALITA 2023: Overview of the Conspiracy Theory Identification Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06954/) (2023)
- [Extracting Victim Counts from Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12367/) (2023)
- [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)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The proliferation of radical online communities and their violent offshoots has sparked great societal concern. However, the current practice of banning such communities from mainstream platforms has unintended consequences: (I) the further radicalization of their members in fringe platforms where they migrate; and (ii) the spillover of harmful content from fringe back onto mainstream platforms. Here, in a large observational study on two banned subreddits, r/TheDonald and r/fatpeoplehate, we examine how factors associated with the RECRO radicalization framework relate to users' migration decisions. Specifically, we quantify how these factors affect users' decisions to post on fringe platforms and, for those who do, whether they continue posting on the mainstream platform. Our results show that individual-level factors, those relating to the behavior of users, are associated with the decision to post on the fringe platform. Whereas social-level factors, users' connection with the radical community, only affect the propensity to be coactive on both platforms. Overall, our findings pave the way for evidence-based moderation policies, as the decisions to migrate and remain coactive amplify unintended consequences of community bans.