# Queuing for Civility: Regulating Emotions and Reducing Toxicity in Digital Discourse

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.00696 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.00696/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Anyone Can Become a Troll: Causes of Trolling Behavior in Online Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.01119/) (2017)
- [The Structure of Toxic Conversations on Twitter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.11596/) (2021)
- [Quarantined! Examining the Effects of a Community-Wide Moderation Intervention on Reddit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.11483/) (2020)
- [Make Reddit Great Again: Assessing Community Effects of Moderation Interventions on r/The_Donald](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.06455/) (2022)
- [Moral Emotions Shape the Virality of COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03590/) (2022)
- [Designing for emotion regulation interventions: an agenda for HCI theory and research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00118/) (2022)
- [Twitter for Sparking a Movement, Reddit for Sharing the Moment: #metoo through the Lens of Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08022/) (2018)
- [Measuring the Prevalence of Anti-Social Behavior in Online Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.13094/) (2022)
- [The Virality of Hate Speech on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13770/) (2022)
- [Encouraging Emotion Regulation in Social Media Conversations through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00884/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The pervasiveness of online toxicity, including hate speech and trolling, disrupts digital interactions and online well-being. Previous research has mainly focused on post-hoc moderation, overlooking the real-time emotional dynamics of online conversations and the impact of users' emotions on others. This paper presents a graph-based framework to identify the need for emotion regulation within online conversations. This framework promotes self-reflection to manage emotional responses and encourage responsible behaviour in real time. Additionally, a comment queuing mechanism is proposed to address intentional trolls who exploit emotions to inflame conversations. This mechanism introduces a delay in publishing comments, giving users time to self-regulate before further engaging in the conversation and helping maintain emotional balance. Analysis of social media data from Twitter and Reddit demonstrates that the graph-based framework reduced toxicity by 12%, while the comment queuing mechanism decreased the spread of anger by 15%, with only 4% of comments being temporarily held on average. These findings indicate that combining real-time emotion regulation with delayed moderation can significantly improve well-being in online environments.