Unbiased Recommender Systems with Implicit Feedback

Abstract

Recommender systems typically rely on implicit feedback (e.g., clicks) to infer user preferences. However, such data is inherently prone to various biases, including position bias and popularity bias. Position bias occurs when higher-ranked items receive more interactions regardless of true relevance. Popularity bias reinforces frequent exposure of popular items while under-recommending relevant, yet less popular ones. Directly learning from such data fails to capture true user preferences, leading to suboptimal recommendations. This research focuses on mitigating position bias and popularity bias in recommender systems. Specifically, I address position bias in learning-to-rank (LTR) systems and popularity bias in collaborative filtering (CF) models and social recommender systems based on graph neural networks. My work develops methods that overcome the limitations of existing approaches to mitigating position bias and popularity bias, enabling more relevant and personalized recommendations that align with users’ preferences.