  Perhaps the most controversial questions in the study of online platforms
today surround the extent to which platforms can intervene to reduce the
societal ills perpetrated on them. Up for debate is whether there exist any
effective and lasting interventions a platform can adopt to address, e.g.,
online bullying, or if other, more far-reaching change is necessary to address
such problems. Empirical work is critical to addressing such questions. But it
is also challenging, because it is time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes
limited to the questions companies are willing to ask. To help focus and inform
this empirical work, we here propose an agent-based modeling (ABM) approach. As
an application, we analyze the impact of a set of interventions on a simulated
online dating platform on the lack of long-term interracial relationships in an
artificial society. In the real world, a lack of interracial relationships are
a critical vehicle through which inequality is maintained. Our work shows that
many previously hypothesized interventions online dating platforms could take
to increase the number of interracial relationships from their website have
limited effects, and that the effectiveness of any intervention is subject to
assumptions about sociocultural structure. Further, interventions that are
effective in increasing diversity in long-term relationships are at odds with
platforms' profit-oriented goals. At a general level, the present work shows
the value of using an ABM approach to help understand the potential effects and
side effects of different interventions that a platform could take.
