The impact of deplatforming the far right: an analysis of YouTube and BitChute

ABSTRACT

The content moderation practice of deplatforming, i.e., the removal of undesired actors, has become common on social media platforms such as YouTube. Our study aims to examine the impact of deplatforming on prominent far-right channels on YouTube. In our study, we are particularly interested in the deplatforming of prominent far-right channels such as Alex Jones, James Allsup, or Red Ice TV to understand the impact deplatforming has on them. To do so, we analyze two datasets: We check whether 11,198 YouTube channels have been removed in 22 months between 2018 and 2019 and for what reason. We then focus on the far right and check whether the deplatformed far-right channels have found a new home on the alternative video platform BitChute. The time frame for this study includes the removal of some critically important far-right figures. Our analysis shows that deplatforming effectively minimizes the reach of disinformation and extreme speech, as alternative platforms allowing this kind of content cannot mitigate the negative effect of being deplatformed on YouTube.

KEYWORDS:

• YouTube
• BitChute
• farright
• deplatforming
• extremism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://support.bitchute.com/policy/guidelines#prohibited-content (accessed on June 13, 2021)

2 https://www.bitchute.com/video/koRP1rj8pkk/ (accessed on July 21, 2023)

3 For all of our models we used 4 chains with 4,000 iterations in total and 500 warm-up iterations. All estimates reached an R-hat of 1. All models converged and the trace plots show well mixing and stationary chains for all estimates.

4 The deletion rate (29%) of our additional 202 far-right channels is higher than the deletion rate (17%) of the 314 channels from our first data set due to the more extreme orientation of these channels (e.g., KKK).

5 https://www.bitchute.com/video/gUkqCehne1tb/ (accessed on October 15, 2020)

6 https://www.bitchute.com/video/Vl8r9niOzKFD/ (accessed on October 15, 2020)

7 https://www.bitchute.com/video/9weYyyk3aQ0D (accessed on October 11, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

Adrian Rauchfleisch’s work was supported by the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan: [grant no 112-2628-H-002-002-].

Notes on contributors

Adrian Rauchfleisch

Adrian Rauchfleisch is an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of Journalism, National Taiwan University. In his research, he focuses on the interplay of politics, the internet, and journalism in Asia, Europe, and the US.

Jonas Kaiser

Dr. Jonas Kaiser is an assistant professor for Communication, Journalism, and Media at Suffolk University and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. His research is located at the intersection of online communities, political extremism, and content moderation.