New Books in Popular Culture 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's School of International and Public Affairs, dives into the challenges of content moderation and online extremism. She discusses how varying moderation standards across social media platforms create safe havens for hate groups like Islamic State and QAnon. Mitts explores how extremist actors manipulate platform rules, the impact on user radicalization and echo chambers, and the tension between censorship and free speech. Her insights highlight the need for unified moderation to combat these complex issues.
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Extremism Is A Fluid, Contextual Label
- Extremism can be defined variably: deviation from majority, intergroup harm, or promotion of violence.
- Definitions shift over time and across societies, so moderation effects depend on who is labeled extremist.
Size-Based Regulation Shapes Moderation
- Democratic countries tend to regulate larger platforms more strictly using size thresholds.
- This regulatory focus on big platforms creates predictable differences in moderation across services.
Uneven Ecosystem Enables Evasion
- Larger platforms are usually more restrictive while smaller platforms are more lenient.
- That uneven ecosystem lets extremist actors adapt by moving toward platforms with looser rules.
