Decentralized Collaborative Filtering Algorithms Based on Complex Network Modeling and Degree Centrality

Given that everyone online is saturated with information, the theoretical significance of recommendation algorithms is evident in the fact that users need help finding products and content they care about. Collaborative filtering predicts a user's rating on an item by finding similar users that rated the item or similar items that were rated by the user, and using the selected similar neighbors to “collaboratively filter” the recommendation. In the process, selected neighbors are considered equally important despite their differences in popularity. Here, we explore a method of modeling recommender systems as networks that can be constructed by considering items as nodes and similarity between them as links. Our research shows that item centrality has a negative impact on the accuracy of rating predictions, which needs to be considered for better algorithm performance. Experiments show that collaborative filtering algorithms can be decentralized by our method and provide a better accuracy of rating prediction. Furthermore, the relationship between the prediction target and its neighbors can be further evaluated based on both their similarity and their centrality.