Unintended Consequences of Recommender System Interventions: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Shilei Luo, Song Yao and Dennis J. Zhang

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Platform content interventions in recommendation systems are typically evaluated as static "nudges", ignoring that the systems adaptively learn from the resulting user behavior. We investigate this dynamic through a large-scale field experiment on a short-video platform. The experiment involves a "sleep reminder" campaign designed to reduce late-night usage. Paradoxically, the intervention increased late-night engagement by 14.75% and overall platform usage by 2.18%, and the effects persisted for weeks even after the experiment. We explain this through a forced-exploration mechanism, showing that by revealing high latent demand for the promoted content, the intervention triggers a recommendation policy update that routine user behavior would not produce. The data generated by the intervention induced the algorithm to update its post-campaign policy, reinforcing the very engagement loops the campaign aimed to mitigate. Our findings demonstrate that user-facing interventions can effectively retrain the underlying algorithm, triggering durable, system-wide shifts in content distribution that challenge standard evaluation metrics in platform governance and social responsibility initiatives.

Date: 2026-06
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