# Evaluating Online Moderation Via LLM-Powered Counterfactual Simulations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07204 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07204/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11432/) (2023)
- [The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07864/) (2023)
- [LLM Evaluators Recognize and Favor Their Own Generations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13076/) (2024)
- [Character-LLM: A Trainable Agent for Role-Playing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10158/) (2023)
- [Social Simulacra: Creating Populated Prototypes for Social Computing Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.04024/) (2022)
- [Self-Preference Bias in LLM-as-a-Judge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21819/) (2024)
- [PersonaLLM: Investigating the Ability of Large Language Models to Express Personality Traits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02547/) (2023)
- [S3: Social-network Simulation System with Large Language Model-Empowered Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.14984/) (2023)
- [Two Tales of Persona in LLMs: A Survey of Role-Playing and Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01171/) (2024)
- [A New Generation of Perspective API: Efficient Multilingual Character-level Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11176/) (2022)
- [SOLAR 10.7B: Scaling Large Language Models with Simple yet Effective Depth Up-Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15166/) (2023)
- [Simulating Opinion Dynamics with Networks of LLM-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09618/) (2023)
- [User Behavior Simulation with Large Language Model based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02552/) (2023)
- [Cooperate or Collapse: Emergence of Sustainable Cooperation in a Society of LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16698/) (2024)
- [Cognitive Bias in Decision-Making with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00811/) (2024)
- [Unveiling the Truth and Facilitating Change: Towards Agent-based Large-scale Social Movement Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16333/) (2024)
- [Simulating Social Media Using Large Language Models to Evaluate Alternative News Feed Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05984/) (2023)
- [Do LLM Agents Exhibit Social Behavior?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15198/) (2023)
- [Lyfe Agents: Generative agents for low-cost real-time social interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02172/) (2023)
- [Y Social: an LLM-powered Social Media Digital Twin](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00818/) (2024)
- [PANDORA Talks: Personality and Demographics on Reddit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04460/) (2020)
- [Do LLMs "know" internally when they follow instructions?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.14516/) (2024)
- [Affective Polarization in Online Climate Change Discourse on Twitter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.13051/) (2020)
- [An agent-based model for emotion contagion and competition in online social media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02676/) (2017)
- [Modelling Human Mobility considering Spatial,Temporal and Social Dimensions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02371/) (2020)
- [The Toxicity Phenomenon Across Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21589/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Online Social Networks (OSNs) widely adopt content moderation to mitigate the spread of abusive and toxic discourse. Nonetheless, the real effectiveness of moderation interventions remains unclear due to the high cost of data collection and limited experimental control. The latest developments in Natural Language Processing pave the way for a new evaluation approach. Large Language Models (LLMs) can be successfully leveraged to enhance Agent-Based Modeling and simulate human-like social behavior with unprecedented degree of believability. Yet, existing tools do not support simulation-based evaluation of moderation strategies. We fill this gap by designing a LLM-powered simulator of OSN conversations enabling a parallel, counterfactual simulation where toxic behavior is influenced by moderation interventions, keeping all else equal. We conduct extensive experiments, unveiling the psychological realism of OSN agents, the emergence of social contagion phenomena and the superior effectiveness of personalized moderation strategies.