Enabling Users’ Control on Recommender Systems for Short Videos: A Design Proposal for the Implementation of the Requirements of the Digital Services Act

In the contemporary information age, online platforms influence users’ behaviour through recommender systems (RSs), the algorithms that suggest content to them. The Digital Services Act (DSA) of the European Union is the first supranational regulation that sets specific transparency and design requirements for RSs with the aim of enhancing users’ autonomy: apart from explaining the functioning of their RSs in the terms and conditions, online platforms are now required to provide a functionality that allows users to modify the parameters on which recommendations rely. However, the standards on how to design DSA-compliant RSs have not been published yet, leaving the regulatory ground open to conflicting interpretations. In this work, we introduce an interactive, controllable short video recommendation platform that will be used to carry out user studies aimed at clarifying how the user control features in RSs can be designed so that users understand and are willing to intervene on the recommendation process. Our contribution proposes original algorithmic and interface design features that can be adopted by the main short-video platforms with minor refinement to comply with the DSA.