Content moderation on social media is at the center of public and academic debate. In this study, we advance our understanding on which type of election-related content gets suspended by social media platforms. For this, we assess the behavior and content shared by suspended accounts during the most important elections in Europe in 2017 (in France, the United Kingdom, and Germany). We identify significant differences when we compare the behavior and content shared by Twitter suspended accounts with all other active accounts, including a focus on amplifying divisive issues like immigration and religion and systematic activities increasing the visibility of specific political figures (often but not always on the right). Our analysis suggests that suspended accounts were overwhelmingly human operated and no more likely than other accounts to share “fake news.” This study sheds light on the moderation policies of social media platforms, which have increasingly raised contentious debates, and equally importantly on the integrity and dynamics of political discussion on social media during major political events.

社交媒体上的内容审核是公共和学术辩论的中心。在这项研究中，我们加深了对社交媒体平台暂停哪种类型的选举相关内容的理解。为此，我们评估了 2017 年欧洲最重要的选举（法国、英国和德国）期间被暂停帐户的行为和共享的内容。当我们将 Twitter 暂停帐户与所有其他活跃帐户共享的行为和内容进行比较时，我们发现了显着差异，包括关注放大移民和宗教等分裂问题以及提高特定政治人物知名度的系统活动（通常但并不总是在正确的）。我们的分析表明，被暂停的账户绝大多数是人为操作的，与其他账户相比，分享“假新闻”的可能性不大。这项研究揭示了社交媒体平台的节制政策，这些政策引发了越来越多的争论，同样重要的是，在重大政治事件期间，社交媒体上政治讨论的完整性和动态性也同样重要。