We propose a simple model of an idealized online cultural market in which $N$ items, endowed with a hidden quality metric, are recommended to users by a ranking algorithm possibly biased by the current items' popularity. Our goal is to better understand the underlying mechanisms of the well-known fact that popularity bias can prevent higher-quality items from becoming more popular than lower-quality items, producing an undesirable misalignment between quality and popularity rankings. We do so under the assumption that users, having limited time/attention, are able to discriminate the best-quality only within a random subset of the items. We discover the existence of a harmful regime in which improper use of popularity can seriously compromise the emergence of quality, and a benign regime in which wise use of popularity, coupled with a small discrimination effort on behalf of users, guarantees the perfect alignment of quality and popularity ranking. Our findings clarify the effects of algorithmic popularity bias on quality outcomes, and may inform the design of more principled mechanisms for techno-social cultural markets.
翻译:我们提出一个理想化在线文化市场的简单模式,在这种模式中,以可能因当前项目受欢迎程度而有偏差的分级算法向用户推荐带有隐藏质量度的美元项目。我们的目标是更好地了解众所周知的以下事实的基本机制:受欢迎性偏见可以防止质量更高的项目受到比低质量项目更多的欢迎,从而在质量和受欢迎程度排名之间造成不可取的不协调。我们这样做的假设是,用户由于时间/意向有限,只能在随机的一组项目中歧视质量最佳的项目。我们发现存在一种有害的制度,在这种制度下,不适当地使用受欢迎性可以严重妨碍质量的出现,以及一个明智地使用受欢迎性的良性制度,加上代表用户的微小歧视努力,可以保证质量和受欢迎程度排名的完全一致。我们的调查结果澄清了逻辑受欢迎性偏见对质量结果的影响,并可能为设计技术社会文化市场更具原则的机制提供信息。