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Autori principali: Leysen, Jens, Favier, Marco, Goethals, Bart
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21547
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author Leysen, Jens
Favier, Marco
Goethals, Bart
author_facet Leysen, Jens
Favier, Marco
Goethals, Bart
contents Data minimization is a legal principle requiring personal data processing to be limited to what is necessary for a specified purpose. Operationalizing this principle for recommender systems, which rely on extensive personal data, remains a significant challenge. This paper conducts a feasibility study on minimizing implicit feedback inference data for such systems. We propose a novel problem formulation, analyze various minimization techniques, and investigate key factors influencing their effectiveness. We demonstrate that substantial inference data reduction is technically feasible without significant performance loss. However, its practicality is critically determined by two factors: the technical setting (e.g., performance targets, choice of model) and user characteristics (e.g., history size, preference complexity). Thus, while we establish its technical feasibility, we conclude that data minimization remains practically challenging and its dependence on the technical and user context makes a universal standard for data `necessity' difficult to implement.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_21547
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle What Data is Really Necessary? A Feasibility Study of Inference Data Minimization for Recommender Systems
Leysen, Jens
Favier, Marco
Goethals, Bart
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
Data minimization is a legal principle requiring personal data processing to be limited to what is necessary for a specified purpose. Operationalizing this principle for recommender systems, which rely on extensive personal data, remains a significant challenge. This paper conducts a feasibility study on minimizing implicit feedback inference data for such systems. We propose a novel problem formulation, analyze various minimization techniques, and investigate key factors influencing their effectiveness. We demonstrate that substantial inference data reduction is technically feasible without significant performance loss. However, its practicality is critically determined by two factors: the technical setting (e.g., performance targets, choice of model) and user characteristics (e.g., history size, preference complexity). Thus, while we establish its technical feasibility, we conclude that data minimization remains practically challenging and its dependence on the technical and user context makes a universal standard for data `necessity' difficult to implement.
title What Data is Really Necessary? A Feasibility Study of Inference Data Minimization for Recommender Systems
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21547