{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,16]],"date-time":"2026-04-16T16:27:23Z","timestamp":1776356843505,"version":"3.51.2"},"reference-count":35,"publisher":"Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)","issue":"4","funder":[{"name":"national funds through FCT\u2014Funda\u00e7\u00e3o para a Ci\u00eancia e a Tecnologia"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["dl.acm.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["ACM Trans. Inf. Syst."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,31]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>Online item ranking systems are crucial for digital marketplaces, directly influencing user experience and vendor revenue. Traditional reputation-based ranking systems weight ratings according to user reputation scores. They have proven effective against manipulation but raise significant ethical concerns regarding user discrimination and privacy, and may raise concerns under emerging regulatory frameworks in certain application contexts. While a user-agnostic ranking system was recently introduced as an alternative approach that uses statistical filtering instead of user reputation scores, its theoretical foundations and resistance to bribing strategies remained unexplored. In this article, we provide the first comprehensive theoretical analysis of user-agnostic ranking system\u2019s robustness properties. We establish formal bounds on bribing resistance by proving three key properties: strategy composition conditions, profitability constraints, and statistical validity requirements. Our theoretical framework demonstrates that profitable bribing strategies in this class of system must satisfy strict statistical conditions, making manipulation more difficult than in reputation-based systems. Experimental evaluation on three real-world datasets confirms our theoretical findings, showing that user-agnostic ranking systems can achieve superior bribing resistance while maintaining comparable effectiveness and efficiency.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3801969","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,13]],"date-time":"2026-03-13T16:39:14Z","timestamp":1773419954000},"page":"1-22","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Statistical Filtering for Fair Item Ranking"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"44","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6104-8444","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Guilherme","family":"Ramos","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science and Engineering, Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto Superior T\u00e9cnico, Lisbon, Portugal and Instituto de Telecomunica\u00e7\u00f5es, Lisbon, Portugal"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6053-3015","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ludovico","family":"Boratto","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Universit\u00e0 di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1989-6057","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mirko","family":"Marras","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Universit\u00e0 di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_2_2_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1509\/jmkr.43.3.345"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_3_2","volume-title":"Influence et manipulation: L\u2019art de la persuasion","author":"Cialdini Robert B.","year":"2021","unstructured":"Robert B. Cialdini. 2021. Influence et manipulation: L\u2019art de la persuasion. First, Brussels."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_4_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/10196780802044776"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_5_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1137\/090748196"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_6_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1108\/10610421211215599"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_7_2","first-page":"62","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Reputation: Theory and Technology","volume":"1","author":"Garcin Florent","year":"2009","unstructured":"Florent Garcin, Boi Faltings, and Radu Jurca. 2009. Aggregating reputation feedback. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Reputation: Theory and Technology, Vol. 1. National Research Council (CNR\u2014Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), Rome, 62\u201374."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_8_2","first-page":"301","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","author":"Grandi Umberto","year":"2016","unstructured":"Umberto Grandi and Paolo Turrini. 2016. A network-based rating system and its resistance to bribery. In Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization, San Francisco, CA, 301\u2013307."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_9_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2827872"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_10_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.dss.2011.11.002"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_11_2","first-page":"324","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 7th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce","author":"Hu Nan","year":"2006","unstructured":"Nan Hu, Paul A. Pavlou, and Jennifer Zhang. 2006. Can online reviews reveal a product\u2019s true quality? Empirical findings and analytical modeling of online word-of-mouth communication. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce. ACM, New York, NY, 324\u2013330."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_12_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1002\/pa.1470"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_13_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.2018.3093"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_14_2","volume-title":"E-Commerce 2019: Business, Technology, Society","author":"Laudon Kenneth C.","year":"2020","unstructured":"Kenneth C. Laudon and Carol Guercio Traver. 2020. E-Commerce 2019: Business, Technology, Society. Pearson, Harlow."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_15_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1137\/1.9781611972825.53"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_16_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.2015.2304"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_17_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-658-15220-8_8"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_18_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3457607"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_19_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2487575.2487580"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_20_2","unstructured":"Larry Page Sergey Brin Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd. 1997. PageRank: Bringing Order to the Web. Technical Report. Stanford Digital Libraries Working Paper."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_21_2","unstructured":"European Parliament. 2023. Artificial Intelligence Act. Retrieved February 6 2024 from https:\/\/www.europarl.europa.eu\/doceo\/document\/TA-9-2023-0236_EN.pdf"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_22_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3397271.3401278"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_23_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ipm.2019.102058"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_24_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3459637.3482171"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_25_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s10994-022-06173-0"},{"issue":"1","key":"e_1_3_2_26_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"303","DOI":"10.1109\/TBDATA.2024.3505055","article-title":"Robust privacy-preserving federated item ranking in online marketplaces: Exploiting platform reputation for effective aggregation","volume":"11","author":"Ramos Guilherme","year":"2024","unstructured":"Guilherme Ramos, Ludovico Boratto, and Mirko Marras. 2024. Robust privacy-preserving federated item ranking in online marketplaces: Exploiting platform reputation for effective aggregation. IEEE Transactions on Big Data 11, 1 (2024), 303\u2013309.","journal-title":"IEEE Transactions on Big Data"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_27_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3726302.3730237"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_28_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3626772.3657977"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_29_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.sysconle.2020.104842"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_30_2","unstructured":"Amazon Musical Instruments Reviews. 2020. Dataset for Musical Instruments Review and Ratings in Kaggle. Retrieved February 6 2024 from https:\/\/www.kaggle.com\/eswarchandt\/amazon-music-reviews"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_31_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3286","DOI":"10.1109\/HICSS.2014.407","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences","author":"Riehle Dirk","year":"2014","unstructured":"Dirk Riehle, Philipp Riemer, Carsten Kolassa, and Michael Schmidt. 2014. Paid vs. volunteer work in open source. In Proceedings of the 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE, 3286\u20133295."},{"issue":"2","key":"e_1_3_2_32_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1145\/3462210","article-title":"A robust reputation-based group ranking system and its resistance to bribery","volume":"16","author":"Sa\u00fade Jo\u00e3o","year":"2021","unstructured":"Jo\u00e3o Sa\u00fade, Guilherme Ramos, Ludovico Boratto, and Carlos Caleiro. 2021. A robust reputation-based group ranking system and its resistance to bribery. ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data 16, 2 (2021), 1\u201335.","journal-title":"ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_33_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ICDM.2017.139"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_34_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.clsr.2018.02.002"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_35_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.clsr.2021.105567"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_36_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"805","DOI":"10.1145\/3593013.3594044","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency","author":"Weerts Hilde","year":"2023","unstructured":"Hilde Weerts, Rapha\u00eble Xenidis, Fabien Tarissan, Henrik Palmer Olsen, and Mykola Pechenizkiy. 2023. Algorithmic unfairness through the lens of EU non-discrimination law: Or why the law is not a decision tree. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 805\u2013816."}],"container-title":["ACM Transactions on Information Systems"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/pdf\/10.1145\/3801969","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,16]],"date-time":"2026-04-16T15:20:02Z","timestamp":1776352802000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/10.1145\/3801969"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,16]]},"references-count":35,"journal-issue":{"issue":"4","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,31]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1145\/3801969"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3801969","relation":{},"ISSN":["1046-8188","1558-2868"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1046-8188","type":"print"},{"value":"1558-2868","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,16]]},"assertion":[{"value":"2025-06-06","order":0,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"2026-03-05","order":2,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"2026-04-16","order":3,"name":"published","label":"Published","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}}]}}