[zobzu]

I don't think it's bad actually. I mean the recommendations could be far better, but this specific case isn't bad.

Say you go on reddit/r/iloveredcars - all you will see upvoted (ie ... RECOMMENDED by users) will be red cars. You'll never see blue cars. You'll never know they even exist. All you've ever seen are red cars. Not only this but you'll notice that over time it's always the same red car pictures being reposted over and over again.

By inserting "wrong" results a small percentage of the time this ensures that users will be exposed a tiny bit to different content, that may be they end up liking, opening an entiere new tree of recommendation opportunities.

Now I'm sure some people don't want this and they do want to see the same red car pictures over and over, but personally, I appreciate that they do this.

[lordgrenville]

aka Multi-Armed Bandit