  This paper develops a theoretical model to study the economic incentives for
a social media platform to moderate user-generated content. We show that a
self-interested platform can use content moderation as an effective marketing
tool to expand its installed user base, to increase the utility of its users,
and to achieve its positioning as a moderate or extreme content platform. The
optimal content moderation strategy differs for platforms with different
revenue models, advertising or subscription. We also show that a platform's
content moderation strategy depends on its technical sophistication. Because of
imperfect technology, a platform may optimally throw away the moderate content
more than the extreme content. Therefore, one cannot judge how extreme a
platform is by just looking at its content moderation strategy. Furthermore, we
show that a platform under advertising does not necessarily benefit from a
better technology for content moderation, but one under subscription does. This
means that platforms under different revenue models can have different
incentives to improve their content moderation technology. Finally, we draw
managerial and policy implications from our insights.
