{"paper":{"title":"Beyond Centralization: User-Controlled Federated Recommendations in Practice","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"Users can control the balance between personalization and diversity in a federated recommender while keeping data private.","cross_cats":["cs.HC"],"primary_cat":"cs.IR","authors_text":"Alejandro Bellogin, Manel Slokom","submitted_at":"2026-04-10T19:12:48Z","abstract_excerpt":"Recommendation systems typically require centralized user data, limiting user control and raising privacy concerns. Federated learning offers an alternative by keeping data on-device, but its impact on real user behavior remains largely unexplored. We present a live federated recommender system that allows users to control the recommendation objective while keeping their data local. In a 53-day deployment with 22 participants and a catalog of 8807 titles, users interacted with recommendations and switched between personalization and diversity-enhanced ranking. We find that users prefer persona"},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"Our results show that user control, privacy, and effective personalization can be combined in a working system. We demonstrate a practical approach to interactive, privacy-preserving recommendation.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"The small number of participants (22) and limited duration (53 days) provide sufficient evidence for the general viability of user-controlled federated recommendations.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"A practical federated recommender allows user control over personalization versus diversity, with users showing preference for personalization in a live deployment.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"Users can control the balance between personalization and diversity in a federated recommender while keeping data private.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"f03e04ca1ec9eed83e22683bd1de244a553afe20575d6067f4ef18a715d5a140"},"source":{"id":"2605.12527","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":"89f8d62c-39c1-4df6-8718-afb46c1bcba7","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-14T21:39:44.068562Z","strongest_claim":"Our results show that user control, privacy, and effective personalization can be combined in a working system. We demonstrate a practical approach to interactive, privacy-preserving recommendation.","one_line_summary":"A practical federated recommender allows user control over personalization versus diversity, with users showing preference for personalization in a live deployment.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"The small number of participants (22) and limited duration (53 days) provide sufficient evidence for the general viability of user-controlled federated recommendations.","pith_extraction_headline":"Users can control the balance between personalization and diversity in a federated recommender while keeping data private."},"references":{"count":50,"sample":[{"doi":"","year":2012,"title":"Wohlin, C. and Runeson, P. and. 2012 , Keywords =","work_id":"fc263d4b-3af8-4529-82c7-499f58c305bf","ref_index":1,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"10.1145/3589334.3645702","year":null,"title":"In: Proceedings of the ACM on Web Con- ference 2024, WWW 2024, Singapore, May 13-17","work_id":"d2431e79-f1d3-465c-bf52-e0bf28958559","ref_index":2,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"10.1145/3412841.3442010","year":2021,"title":"2021 , isbn =","work_id":"8bf2fbeb-c6f6-41f1-9b38-0290b1da3b76","ref_index":3,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":2012,"title":"2012 , isbn =","work_id":"0129653e-368d-4988-ac17-a5cd6ac27c63","ref_index":4,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":null,"title":"Federated Recommendation Systems , year=","work_id":"a968b41f-8119-4bdc-bf42-3d8873f5d166","ref_index":5,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false}],"resolved_work":50,"snapshot_sha256":"c5ee0d807c84ef169112879dbf61549edb9fd27066d0308a521c499d565f5d44","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":2,"snapshot_sha256":"3cf483b10a0441ef0b9a42cc44480d8d1e61b17e716432a1c1e26175b9f788d6"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}