Name
Smitha Milli, "Intentionally Curated, Collectively Constrained: New Approaches To Social Media"
Date & Time
Thursday, October 16, 2025, 11:55 AM - 12:20 PM
Speakers
Smitha Milli, Meta FAIR "Intentionally Curated, Collectively Constrained: New Approaches To Social Media" Engagement-based personalization is the norm on social media. However, engagement-based algorithms often have undesirable side effects, such as amplifying divisive, angry, or low-quality content that users say they don’t want to see. In this talk, I will highlight recent research that explores intentional and collective alternatives to social media.
First, I’ll discuss CTRL-Rec, a method that enables users to intentionally control their recommender systems with natural language requests (e.g., “posts that are inspiring but not cringe”). CTRL-Rec makes it possible to balance users’ explicitly stated preferences with their engagement patterns. Notably, it can directly influence the retrieval stage of modern recommender systems, rather than being limited to post-retrieval ranking. In a study with Letterboxd users, we find that CTRL-Rec significantly enhances users’ sense of control compared to traditional controls.
Second, I’ll discuss our work on incorporating collective constraints into (personalized) ranking. Specifically, we adopt the concept of justified representation (JR) from social choice theory . By enforcing a JR constraint to ranking, we achieve greater representation of diverse viewpoints, while still maintaining compatibility with conversational quality metrics and high user engagement. Smitha Milli is a Research Scientist at Meta FAIR in the AI & Society group. They received their BS and PhD in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from UC Berkeley where they were supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and an Open Philanthropy AI Fellowship. Their research focuses on pluralistic alignment, i.e., ensuring that machine learning systems are effective for and inclusive of people who hold diverse and differing viewpoints. Their work has been discussed in live television, in policy outlets such as Tech Policy Press and the Knight First Amendment Institute, and in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee.
Location Name
Kline Tower 14th Floor
Full Address
Kline Tower
219 Prospect St, 14th Floor
New Haven, CT 06511
United States
Session Type
Lecture
