Content Filtering with Inattentive Information Consumers
Ian Ball, James Bono, Justin Grana, Nicole Immorlica, Brendan Lucier, Aleksandrs Slivkins
Abstract
We develop a model of content filtering as a game between the filter and the content consumer, where the latter incurs information costs for examining the content. Motivating examples include censoring misinformation, spam/phish filtering, and recommender systems acting on a stream of content. When the attacker is exogenous, we show that improving the filter’s quality is weakly Pareto improving, but has no impact on equilibrium payoffs until the filter becomes sufficiently accurate. Further, if the filter does not internalize the consumer’s information costs, its lack of commitment power may render it useless and lead to inefficient outcomes. When the attacker is also strategic, improvements in filter quality may decrease equilibrium payoffs.
BibTeX
@article{Ball_Bono_Grana_Immorlica_Lucier_Slivkins_2024, title={Content Filtering with Inattentive Information Consumers}, volume={38}, url={https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/28803}, DOI={10.1609/aaai.v38i9.28803}, abstractNote={We develop a model of content filtering as a game between the filter and the content consumer, where the latter incurs information costs for examining the content. Motivating examples include censoring misinformation, spam/phish filtering, and recommender systems acting on a stream of content. When the attacker is exogenous, we show that improving the filter’s quality is weakly Pareto improving, but has no impact on equilibrium payoffs until the filter becomes sufficiently accurate. Further, if the filter does not internalize the consumer’s information costs, its lack of commitment power may render it useless and lead to inefficient outcomes. When the attacker is also strategic, improvements in filter quality may decrease equilibrium payoffs.}, number={9}, journal={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence}, author={Ball, Ian and Bono, James and Grana, Justin and Immorlica, Nicole and Lucier, Brendan and Slivkins, Aleksandrs}, year={2024}, month={Mar.}, pages={9485-9493} }