Twitter’s suspension of Donald Trump’s account took away his preferred means of communicating with millions of his followers. AP Photo/Tali Arbel January 15, 2021 Does ‘deplatforming’ work to curb hate speech and calls for violence? 3 experts in online communications weigh in Jeremy Blackburn, Binghamton University, State University of New York; Robert W. Gehl, Louisiana Tech University, and Ugochukwu Etudo, University of Connecticut Banning extremists from social media platforms can reduce hate speech, but the deplatforming process has to be handled with care – and it can have unintended consequences.