María Amelia Gibbons & Martín Rossi, 2019.
Working Papers 133, Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia, revised Sep 2019.
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 the consumption of drugs and alcohol, 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.
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