New Books Network Tamar Mitts, "Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Oct 31, 2025
Tamar Mitts, an Associate Professor at Columbia, dives into the complexities of moderating online extremism. She reveals how social media platforms create safe havens for hate groups through varying content moderation standards. Mitts discusses evasion tactics extremists use to avoid bans and the allure of middle-sized platforms like Telegram. She outlines the tension between free speech and the need for regulation while stressing the importance of understanding the entire online ecosystem in combating hate. Her insights shed light on the future of digital governance.
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Extremists Exploit An Uneven Ecosystem
- Extremist actors adapt creatively to platform bans by exploiting uneven moderation across services.
- Studying the multi-platform ecosystem reveals patterns missed by platform-by-platform analysis.
Size-Based Regulation Shapes Moderation
- Democracies tend to regulate platforms by size thresholds, focusing on the largest services.
- That size-based regulation helps produce predictable differences in moderation across platforms.
A Predictable Size–Leniency Gradient
- Larger platforms are consistently more restrictive; smaller ones tend to be more lenient.
- This predictable gradient drives extremist actors to relocate to mid-size platforms offering reach plus lax rules.
