Hijacking online reviews: sparse manipulation and behavioral buffering in popularity-biased rating systems

Abstract

Online reviews and recommendation systems help users navigate overwhelming choice, but they are vulnerable to self-reinforcing distortions. This paper examines how a single malicious reviewer can exploit popularity-biased rating dynamics and whether behavioral heterogeneity in user responses can reduce the damage. We develop a minimal agent-based model in which users choose what to rate partly on the basis of currently displayed averages. We compare broad attacks that perturb many items with sparse attacks that selectively boost low-quality items and suppress high-quality items. Additional analyses not shown here indicate that sparse attacks are substantially more harmful than broad attacks because they better exploit popularity-based exposure. The main text then focuses on sparse attacks and asks how their effects change as the fraction of contrarian users increases. Three results stand out. First, attack-induced damage is strongest when prior honest reviews are scarce, revealing a transition from a fragile low-information regime to a more robust high-information regime. Second, sparse attacks are especially effective at artificially promoting low-quality items. Third, moderate contrarian diversity partially buffers these distortions, primarily by suppressing the rise of low-quality items rather than fully restoring high-quality items to the top. The findings suggest that recommendation robustness depends not only on attack detection and predictive accuracy, but also on review density, popularity feedback, and user response heterogeneity.