Eric Gilbert

Eric Gilbert is the John Derby Evans Associate Professor in the University of Michigan School of Information, with a courtesy appointment in computer science and engineering, and he leads a research group focused on social computing and online communities. He is a senior author of 'You Can't Stay Here: The Efficacy of Reddit's 2015 Ban Examined Through Hate Speech,' a 2017 study that analysed more than one hundred million posts and comments to evaluate Reddit's 2015 bans of communities such as r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown. The study found that users who remained on Reddit after the bans sharply reduced their use of hate speech, while the subreddits to which some migrated did not see a significant overall increase, becoming a frequently cited empirical contribution to debates over whether banning toxic communities works. His broader research on content moderation and online behaviour regularly uses Reddit as a study site.