提出新指标BEP,量化用户跳出信息茧房的潜力。
Quantifying the Potential to Escape Filter Bubbles: A Behavior-Aware Measure via Contrastive Simulation
- 用对比模拟框架区分偏好建模与信息封闭的影响
- 实验证明精准推荐反而加剧信息茧房问题
- 适合关注推荐系统公平性与多样性的研究者
如今推荐系统已成为在线平台的关键,通过精准偏好建模塑造用户信息暴露。但这种策略也可能强化用户既有偏好,导致著名的“信息茧房”现象。尽管已有研究关注该问题,但多数评估指标仅衡量曝光多样性,无法区分算法偏好建模与实际信息封闭之间的差异。为此,本文提出行为感知的‘信息茧房逃脱潜力’(Bubble Escape Potential, BEP),通过对比模拟框架为合成用户赋予不同行为倾向(如积极与消极),比较由此产生的曝光模式,实现对信息茧房效应与偏好建模效果的解耦,从而更精确诊断茧房严重程度。我们在多个推荐模型上进行了广泛实验,检验预测精度与不同群体中茧房逃脱潜力的关系。据我们所知,这是首次定量验证偏好建模与信息茧房之间的权衡困境。此外,我们发现轻微随机推荐并不能有效缓解信息茧房,这一反直觉现象为后续研究提供了理论基础。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Nowadays, recommendation systems have become crucial to online platforms, shaping user exposure by accurate preference modeling. However, such an exposure strategy can also reinforce users' existing preferences, leading to a notorious phenomenon named filter bubbles. Given its negative effects, such as group polarization, increasing attention has been paid to exploring reasonable measures to filter bubbles. However, most existing evaluation metrics simply measure the diversity of user exposure, failing to distinguish between algorithmic preference modeling and actual information confinement. In view of this, we introduce Bubble Escape Potential (BEP), a behavior-aware measure that quantifies how easily users can escape from filter bubbles. Specifically, BEP leverages a contrastive simulation framework that assigns different behavioral tendencies (e.g., positive vs. negative) to synthetic users and compares the induced exposure patterns. This design enables decoupling the effect of filter bubbles and preference modeling, allowing for more precise diagnosis of bubble severity. We conduct extensive experiments across multiple recommendation models to examine the relationship between predictive accuracy and bubble escape potential across different groups. To the best of our knowledge, our empirical results are the first to quantitatively validate the dilemma between preference modeling and filter bubbles. What's more, we observe a counter-intuitive phenomenon that mild random recommendations are ineffective in alleviating filter bubbles, which can offer a principled foundation for further work in this direction.
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