Let me start by saying that it is vital that deplatforming is a tool available to platforms to remove harms from them. Deplatforming is a vital part of the overall cleaning up of the infrastructure, but also to make sure the outputs of their algorithms aren't malignant. It's the algorithmic amplification of bad actors, the fact that they're given access to enormous audiences and they're amplified....
One of our research reports, “Malgorithm”, looked at the way the algorithm works on Instagram. It showed that if you follow wellness, the algorithm was feeding you anti-vax content. If you follow anti-vax content, it was feeding you anti-Semitic content and QAnon content. It knows that some people are vulnerable to misinformation and conspiracy theories and that conspiracy theories, because of the psychology of them—they're driven by epistemic anxiety but they never sate that epistemic anxiety—lead to rabbit-holing.
It was driving people deeper and deeper into warrens of conspiracy theories. Why? Because the commercial imperative is simple. You find conspiracy theories on social media platforms because they are the least regulated spaces in terms of quality control that you have for mass publishing of content.
Deplatforming these people and putting them into their own little hole, a little hole of anti-Semites, anti-vaxxers and general lunatics, is a good thing, because you limit their capacity to infect other people. Also, for trends such as the convergence and hybridization of ideologies.... I went to an anti-vax rally in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, and standing there were members of the Kennedy family, QAnon, anti-Semites, Proud Boys and kooky hippies who smoke ayahuasca. It's an entire mix of people, which is driven by social media convergence.
It is vital that they are deplatforming people so that we don't end up with the kinds of problems that you also faced in Canada a few months ago.