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When You Can't Tube... Impact of a Major Youtube Outage on Rapes

Author

Listed:
  • María Amelia Gibbons

    (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

  • Martín Rossi

    (Department of Economics, Universidad de San Andres)

Abstract

On Tuesday, October 16th, 2018, YouTube experienced a major and rare global service outage. Using high-frequency crime data from the U.S., we document an important increase in rapes in the 24-hour period following the outage. We then investigate various potential underlying channels that may link the YouTube outage to the subsequent observed increase in rapes. We explore a direct effect on crime, time substitution, an effect on drug and alcohol-related offenses, and the increase in pornography viewing, and the overall evidence only supports the hypothesis that the increase in rapes was driven by an increase in pornography viewing.

Suggested Citation

  • María Amelia Gibbons & Martín Rossi, 2019. "When You Can't Tube... Impact of a Major Youtube Outage on Rapes," Working Papers 133, Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia, revised Apr 2020.
    • Handle: RePEc:sad:wpaper:133
    as

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    File URL: https://webacademicos.udesa.edu.ar/pub/econ/doc133.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    sexual crime; sexual offenses; event study; social media; pornography;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

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