Method for Mitigating Attention to Inappropriate Content Based on Attention Dynamics Model

Abstract: The expansion of the attention economy has led to the growing issue of inappropriate content being posted by profit-driven users. Previous countermeasures against inappropriate content have relied on moderation, which raises ethical concerns, or information diffusion control, which requires considering larger scale networks, including general users. This study proposes an imitation strategy as an intervention method that does not rely on moderation and focuses on a relatively smaller scale competitive network of information disseminators rather than the entire social network. The imitation strategy is a novel approach that utilizes increased competition among information disseminators through imitation to reduce attention to inappropriate content. Through theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, I demonstrate that the imitation strategy is more effective when nodes with higher eigenvector centrality are selected as targets and nodes with lower eigenvector centrality are chosen as imitators.