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Instead of 20% being completely random, could you instead present some newsletters that are completely opposite to what they prefer? For example, if someone act
by atlgator 5y ago
Instead of 20% being completely random, could you instead present some newsletters that are completely opposite to what they prefer? For example, if someone actively reads conservative political commentary, adding in some random newsletters about cars or travel doesn't improve bias (correct me if I'm wrong). It would not be better to offer some percentage of liberal political commentary? And vice versa of course. My suggestion is imperfect because I'm leaving out the middle/moderate viewpoint and touting only extremes, but I'm ultimately trying to drive toward not diversity a of topics but diversity of viewpoints on interested topics.
- jacobobryant 5y agoSomething like that could be an option; see also this other comment.[1] However every time I've thought about "hey, what if we made the 20% better by...", my conclusion has been "oh, but then we might never recommend [items with some set of properties that should get recommended], and the algorithm won't be able to correct itself." Any time you try to optimize in a certain direction, you'll always introduce at least a little bias[2], and randomness at least gives a chance of breaking out of that. So something like this could be a good idea, but I wouldn't want to have it completely replace random recommendations. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27669863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27669863 [2] This experience has affected the way I perceive advice from people on the internet