As more people flock to social media to connect with others to form virtual communities, it is important to understand how members of these groups interact to understand human behavior on the Web. In response to the rise in hate speech, harassment and other antisocial behavior many social media companies have implemented different content and user moderation policies. On Reddit, for example, communities, \ie, subreddits, are occasionally banned for violating these policies. We study the effect of these regulatory actions as well as when a community experiences a significant external event like an election or a market crash. Overall, we find that subreddit bans prompt a small, but statistically significant, number of active users to leave the platform or change their posting behavior
the effect of external events varies with the type of event. We conclude with a discussion on the effectiveness of the bans and wider implications for the online content moderation.