Effects of Algorithmic Visibility on Conspiracy Communities: Reddit after Epstein's 'Suicide'

This paper examines how algorithmic visibility shapes a large conspiracy community on Reddit after Jeffrey Epstein's death. We ask whether homepage exposure changes who join r/conspiracy, how long they stay, and how they adapt linguistically, compared with users who arrive through organic discovery. Using a computational framework that combines toxicity scores, survival analysis, and lexical and semantic measures, the study shows that homepage visibility acts as a selection mechanism rather than a simple amplifier. Users who discover the community organically integrate more quickly into its linguistic and thematic norms and show more stable engagement over time. By contrast, users who arrive through visibility on the homepage remain semantically distant from core discourse and participate more briefly. Overall, algorithmic visibility reshapes audience size, community composition, and linguistic cohesion: newcomers who do not join organically have different incentives, integrate weakly, and leave quickly, which limits organic growth. In this high-risk setting, the observed behavioral and linguistic trajectories over five months do not match standard narratives in which incidental exposure to conspiracy content produces durable radicalization. These findings can inform the design of web platforms and recommendation systems that seek to curb harmful conspiracy exposure while supporting more responsible, transparent, and socially beneficial uses of algorithmic recommendations.