Optimal Control Synthesis of Closed-Loop Recommendation Systems over Social Networks

TL;DR

This paper formulates the design of social network recommendation systems as an optimal control problem, balancing engagement, polarization, and diversity, and analyzes stability conditions for the resulting closed-loop system.

Contribution

It introduces a control-theoretic framework for recommendation system design that accounts for stability, polarization, and diversity, providing spectral conditions for stability and highlighting potential pitfalls.

Findings

Stable recommendation systems are achievable under certain spectral conditions.

Excessive emphasis on engagement can lead to destabilizing behaviors.

The control approach balances user engagement with polarization and diversity.

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of designing recommendation systems for social networks and e-commerce platforms from a control-theoretic perspective. We treat the design of recommendation systems as a state-feedback infinite-horizon optimal control problem with a performance index that (i) rewards alignment and engagement, (ii) penalizes polarization and large deviations from an uncontrolled baseline, and (iii) regularizes exposure across neighboring users. The recommendation entries are fed to the platform users, who are assumed to follow a networked, multi-topic, continuous-time opinion dynamics. We show that the designed control yields a stabilizing recommendation system under simple algebraic spectral conditions on the weights that encode the platform's preference for engagement, stability of preferences, polarization, and cross-user diversity. Conversely, we show that when ill-posed weights are selected in the optimal control problem (namely, when engagement is excessively rewarded), the closed-loop system can exhibit destabilizing, pathological behaviors that conflict with the design objectives.