Reconciling the Quality vs Popularity Dichotomy in Online Cultural Markets

We propose a simple model of an idealized online cultural market in which N items, endowed with hidden quality metric, are recommended to users by ranking algorithm possibly biased the current items’ popularity. Our goal is better understand underlying mechanisms well-known fact that popularity bias can prevent higher-quality items from becoming more popular than lower-quality producing undesirable misalignment between and rankings. do so under assumption users, having limited time/attention, able discriminate best-quality only within random subset items. discover existence harmful regime improper use seriously compromise emergence quality, benign wise popularity, coupled small discrimination effort on behalf guarantees perfect alignment ranking. findings clarify effects algorithmic outcomes, may inform design principled for techno-social markets.