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Main Authors: Lin, Chengzhi, Wang, Chuyuan, Xie, Annan, Wang, Wuhong, Zhang, Ziye, Ruan, Canguang, Huang, Yuancai, Liu, Yongqi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.06920
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author Lin, Chengzhi
Wang, Chuyuan
Xie, Annan
Wang, Wuhong
Zhang, Ziye
Ruan, Canguang
Huang, Yuancai
Liu, Yongqi
author_facet Lin, Chengzhi
Wang, Chuyuan
Xie, Annan
Wang, Wuhong
Zhang, Ziye
Ruan, Canguang
Huang, Yuancai
Liu, Yongqi
contents In video recommendation systems, user behaviors such as watch time, likes, and follows are commonly used to infer user interest. However, these behaviors are influenced by various biases, including duration bias, demographic biases, and content category biases, which obscure true user preferences. In this paper, we hypothesize that biases and user interest are independent of each other. Based on this assumption, we propose a novel method that aligns predicted behavior distributions across different bias conditions using quantile mapping, theoretically guaranteeing zero mutual information between bias variables and the true user interest. By explicitly modeling the conditional distributions of user behaviors under different biases and mapping these behaviors to quantiles, we effectively decouple user interest from the confounding effects of various biases. Our approach uniquely handles both continuous signals (e.g., watch time) and discrete signals (e.g., likes, comments), while simultaneously addressing multiple bias dimensions. Additionally, we introduce a computationally efficient mean alignment alternative technique for practical real-time inference in large-scale systems. We validate our method through online A/B testing on two major video platforms: Kuaishou Lite and Kuaishou. The results demonstrate significant improvements in user engagement and retention, with \textbf{cumulative lifts of 0.267\% and 0.115\% in active days, and 1.102\% and 0.131\% in average app usage time}, respectively. The results demonstrate that our approach consistently achieves significant improvements in long-term user retention and substantial gains in average app usage time across different platforms. Our core code will be publised at https://github.com/justopit/CQE.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_06920
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AlignPxtr: Aligning Predicted Behavior Distributions for Bias-Free Video Recommendations
Lin, Chengzhi
Wang, Chuyuan
Xie, Annan
Wang, Wuhong
Zhang, Ziye
Ruan, Canguang
Huang, Yuancai
Liu, Yongqi
Information Retrieval
In video recommendation systems, user behaviors such as watch time, likes, and follows are commonly used to infer user interest. However, these behaviors are influenced by various biases, including duration bias, demographic biases, and content category biases, which obscure true user preferences. In this paper, we hypothesize that biases and user interest are independent of each other. Based on this assumption, we propose a novel method that aligns predicted behavior distributions across different bias conditions using quantile mapping, theoretically guaranteeing zero mutual information between bias variables and the true user interest. By explicitly modeling the conditional distributions of user behaviors under different biases and mapping these behaviors to quantiles, we effectively decouple user interest from the confounding effects of various biases. Our approach uniquely handles both continuous signals (e.g., watch time) and discrete signals (e.g., likes, comments), while simultaneously addressing multiple bias dimensions. Additionally, we introduce a computationally efficient mean alignment alternative technique for practical real-time inference in large-scale systems. We validate our method through online A/B testing on two major video platforms: Kuaishou Lite and Kuaishou. The results demonstrate significant improvements in user engagement and retention, with \textbf{cumulative lifts of 0.267\% and 0.115\% in active days, and 1.102\% and 0.131\% in average app usage time}, respectively. The results demonstrate that our approach consistently achieves significant improvements in long-term user retention and substantial gains in average app usage time across different platforms. Our core code will be publised at https://github.com/justopit/CQE.
title AlignPxtr: Aligning Predicted Behavior Distributions for Bias-Free Video Recommendations
topic Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.06920