A Blessing or a Curse? The Impact of Platform-initiated Comment Moderation on Subsequent Answer Generation on Social Media Platform

Abstract

Social media moderation encompasses actions undertaken by platforms to uphold community norms. While existing literature predominantly examines the direct impact of moderation on reducing harmful behavior, limited attention has been given to its spillover effect on other content, particularly on unmoderated content. This study exploits a temporary shutdown of the commenting function on a large Q&A platform to investigate the spillover effect of comment moderation on the subsequent answer generation. Our analysis reveals that comment moderation induce a decrease in the volume of the subsequent answers, with an improved quality during and after the shutdown period. Our mechanism analyses show that, after comment moderation, contributors may become more conservative in providing new answers by writing more similar, specific, and longer content. In addition, comment moderation exerts a negative impact on the volume of the subsequent regular answers but has no significant effect on harmful answers, which provides supporting evidence for the plausibility of a chilling effect.