The Geopolitics of Deplatforming: A Study of Suspensions of Politically-Interested Iranian Accounts on Twitter

Social media companies increasingly play a role in regulating freedom of speech. Debates over ideological motivations behind suspension policies of major platforms are on the rise. This study contributes to this ongoing debate by looking at content moderation from a geopolitical perspective. The starting premise is that US-based social media companies may be inclined to moderate content on their platforms in compliance with US sanctions laws, especially those concerned with the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List. Despite the release of transparency reports by social media companies, we know little about the scope of the problem and the impact of suspensions on political conversations. I tracked 600,000 users who follow Iranian elites on Twitter. After accounting for alternative explanations, the results show that Principlist (conservative) users and those supportive of the Iranian government are significantly more likely to be suspended. Further analyses uncover the types of discussions that are being suppressed as a result of these suspensions. Although the exact mechanism at hand cannot be decisively isolated, this paper contributes to building a better understanding of how governments can influence conversations of geopolitical relevance, and how social media suspensions shape political conversations online.