Post-hoc Provider Fairness Adaptation via Hierarchical Exposure Alignment
Abstract
Provider exposure fairness is crucial for sustaining a healthy content ecosystem and preventing monopolization in recommender systems. Yet, most existing methods either incorporate fairness constraints during model training, requiring expensive retraining when fairness objectives change, or rely on post-hoc reranking with fixed criteria, which lacks adaptability to diverse fairness requirements. To overcome these limitations, we propose Post-hoc Fairness Adaptation (PFA), a lightweight framework that equips a frozen recommender with a fairness adapter, enabling flexible fairness control without retraining the backbone model. Specifically, the fairness adapter learns personalized additive score adjustments from user–item embeddings, which are injected into the original ranking scores to steer provider exposure toward fairness. To train the adapter, we minimize the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence between the actual and the target fair exposure distributions. However, this global objective implicitly treats all providers equally, ignoring structural disparities such as imbalanced provider group sizes and heterogeneous exposure within groups. Consequently, fairness may appear satisfied at an aggregate level while severe inter-group and intra-group exposure imbalances persist, undermining practical fairness. To address this, we design Hierarchical Exposure Fairness Alignment (HEFA), which explicitly balances inter- and intra-group provider exposure disparities, enabling flexible adaptation to diverse fairness requirements. To mitigate potential accuracy degradation, PFA jointly optimizes HEFA with a differentiable NDCG loss, enabling end-to-end fairness optimization while preserving ranking quality. Extensive experiments on three public datasets demonstrate that PFA achieves substantial fairness gains with negligible accuracy loss, consistently outperforming strong baselines. Code is available at https://github.com/Tam-JQK/Post-train.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zechun Niu | 49 | 59 Addressing Personalized Bias for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank 45 Distributionally Robust Optimization for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank 43 Investigating the Robustness of Counterfactual Learning to Rank Models: A Reproducibility Study (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank |
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| 2 | Yimeng Bai | 47 | 70 Recommendation Unlearning via Influence Function (2025) Efficient Training and Data Optimization 43 LabelCraft: Empowering Short Video Recommendations with Automated Label Crafting (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation 43 Leveraging Watch-time Feedback for Short-Video Recommendations: A Causal Labeling Framework (2023) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Xin Xin 0003 | 42 |
Area-chair candidates (4)
| Xin Xin 0003 assigned | 42 | 10 papers | |
| Yanan Niu COI: co-author | 39 | 15 papers | |
| Pengyue Jia | 37 | 10 papers | |
| Kun Gai COI: co-author | 37 | 5 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Theresia Veronika Rampisela | 68 | 3 | 68 Evaluation Measures of Individual Item Fairness for Recommender Systems: A Critical Study (2025) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation 68 Stairway to Fairness: Connecting Group and Individual Fairness (2025) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation |
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| 2 | Yifan Wang 0017 COI: co-author | 61 | 3 | 100 A Survey on the Fairness of Recommender Systems (2023) Popularity Bias and Long-Tail Debiasing 73 Popularity-Aware Alignment and Contrast for Mitigating Popularity Bias (2024) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 3 | Sruthi Gorantla | 60 | 3 | 68 Sampling Individually-Fair Rankings that are Always Group Fair (2023) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation 68 Optimizing Learning-to-Rank Models for Ex-Post Fair Relevance (2024) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation |
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| 4 | Zechun Niu assigned | 49 | 3 | 59 Addressing Personalized Bias for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank 45 Distributionally Robust Optimization for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank |
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| 5 | Miaomiao Cai 0001 COI: co-author | 47 | 3 | 73 Popularity-Aware Alignment and Contrast for Mitigating Popularity Bias (2024) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation 56 Mitigating Recommendation Biases via Group-Alignment and Global-Uniformity in Representation Learning (2024) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 6 | Yimeng Bai assigned | 47 | 3 | 70 Recommendation Unlearning via Influence Function (2025) Efficient Training and Data Optimization 43 LabelCraft: Empowering Short Video Recommendations with Automated Label Crafting (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 7 | Seongmin Park 0002 | 46 | 3 | 60 Dual Unbiased Recommender Learning for Implicit Feedback (2021) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation 60 Bilateral Self-unbiased Learning from Biased Implicit Feedback (2022) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 8 | Yuta Saito | 44 | 3 | 68 Towards Resolving Propensity Contradiction in Offline Recommender Learning (2022) Popularity Bias and Long-Tail Debiasing 68 Unbiased Recommender Learning from Missing-Not-At-Random Implicit Feedback (2020) Popularity Bias and Long-Tail Debiasing |
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| 9 | Min Hou 0004 COI: co-author | 44 | 3 | 68 Fair Personalized Learner Modeling Without Sensitive Attributes (2025) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation 56 Mitigating Recommendation Biases via Group-Alignment and Global-Uniformity in Representation Learning (2024) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 10 | Sunhao Dai | 43 | 3 | 73 Exploring the Escalation of Source Bias in User, Data, and Recommender System Feedback Loop (2025) Popularity Bias and Long-Tail Debiasing 49 SAQRec: Aligning Recommender Systems to User Satisfaction via Questionnaire Feedback (2024) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 11 | Hao Liu 0078 COI: co-author | 43 | 3 | 45 Mitigating Distribution Shifts in Sequential Recommendation: An Invariance Perspective (2025) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation 43 Mitigating Fine-tuning Bias: A Parameter-Efficient Debiasing Framework for Large Language Models (2026) Bias Mitigation Methods |
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| 12 | James Caverlee | 43 | 3 | 85 Fairness among New Items in Cold Start Recommender Systems (2021) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation 68 Rabbit Holes and Taste Distortion: Distribution-Aware Recommendation with Evolving Interests (2021) Popularity Bias and Long-Tail Debiasing |
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| 13 | Jizhi Zhang | 43 | 3 | 60 Popularity-aware Distributionally Robust Optimization for Recommendation System (2023) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation 58 Is ChatGPT Fair for Recommendation? Evaluating Fairness in Large Language Model Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 14 | Hyunsik Yoo | 42 | 3 | 100 Ensuring User-side Fairness in Dynamic Recommender Systems (2024) Popularity Bias and Long-Tail Debiasing 46 Generalizable Recommender System During Temporal Popularity Distribution Shifts (2025) Robustness to Noise and Distribution Shift |
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| 16 | Xialong Liu | 42 | 3 | 68 Fairness-Aware Design for Contextual Experiments: Guaranteeing Reliability and Equity in Heterogeneous Subgroups (2026) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation 46 Tutorial: Data Denoising Metrics in Recommender Systems (2023) Robustness to Noise and Distribution Shift |
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| 17 | Chongming Gao | 42 | 3 | 59 Alleviating Matthew Effect of Offline Reinforcement Learning in Interactive Recommendation (2023) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation 46 SPRec: Self-Play to Debias LLM-based Recommendation (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 18 | Lichan Hong | 41 | 3 | 68 Empowering Long-tail Item Recommendation through Cross Decoupling Network (CDN) (2023) Popularity Bias and Long-Tail Debiasing 44 Improving Training Stability for Multitask Ranking Models in Recommender Systems (2023) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 19 | Ed H. Chi | 41 | 3 | 68 Beyond Globally Optimal: Focused Learning for Improved Recommendations (2017) Popularity Bias and Long-Tail Debiasing 42 Co-optimize Content Generation and Consumption in a Large Scale Video Recommendation System (2024) Multi-Task and Multi-Objective Optimization |
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| 20 | Jin Chen 0008 | 41 | 3 | 46 Dual Test-Time Training for Out-of-Distribution Recommender System (2025) Robustness to Noise and Distribution Shift 45 Learning-Efficient Yet Generalizable Collaborative Filtering for Item Recommendation (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 21 | Zhengyi Yang 0007 | 40 | 3 | 45 A Generic Learning Framework for Sequential Recommendation with Distribution Shifts (2023) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation 44 Item-side Fairness of Large Language Model-based Recommendation System (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 22 | Riwei Lai | 40 | 3 | 46 DAR: Dimension-Adaptive Recommendation with Multi-Granular Noise Control (2025) Robustness to Noise and Distribution Shift 44 Matryoshka Representation Learning for Recommendation with Layer- and Hardness-Adaptive Negative Sampling (2026) Negative Sampling and Loss Functions |
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| 23 | Bo Chen 0023 | 39 | 3 | 72 Towards efficient and effective unlearning of large language models for recommendation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 43 A Comprehensive Survey on Automated Machine Learning for Recommendations (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 24 | Fei Sun 0001 | 39 | 3 | 46 Accelerating the Surrogate Retraining for Poisoning Attacks against Recommender Systems (2024) Robustness to Noise and Distribution Shift 44 LoRec: Combating Poisons with Large Language Model for Robust Sequential Recommendation (2024) Robustness to Noise and Distribution Shift |
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| 25 | Yang Song 0008 COI: co-author | 39 | 3 | 46 Inverse Learning with Extremely Sparse Feedback for Recommendation (2024) Robustness to Noise and Distribution Shift 43 LabelCraft: Empowering Short Video Recommendations with Automated Label Crafting (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 26 | Yang Zhang 0072 COI: co-author | 39 | 3 | 72 Exact and Efficient Unlearning for Large Language Model-Based Recommendation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 44 Preliminary Study on Incremental Learning for Large Language Model-based Recommender Systems (2024) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 27 | Shuchang Liu 0001 | 39 | 3 | 44 DLCRec: A Novel Approach for Managing Diversity in LLM-Based Recommender Systems (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization 43 Comprehensive List Generation for Multi-Generator Reranking (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking |
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| 28 | Lingling Yi COI: co-author | 39 | 3 | 73 DVR: Micro-Video Recommendation Optimizing Watch-Time-Gain under Duration Bias (2022) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation 73 Alleviating Video-length Effect for Micro-video Recommendation (2024) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 30 | Jieming Zhu | 39 | 3 | 46 Directional Adversarial Training for Recommender Systems (2020) Robustness to Noise and Distribution Shift 43 Can LLMs Outshine Conventional Recommenders? A Comparative Evaluation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 31 | Yongxin Ni | 39 | 3 | 55 Causality-Inspired Fair Representation Learning for Multimodal Recommendation (2025) Bias Mitigation Methods 44 Factored heterogeneous similarity model for recommendation with implicit feedback (2021) Negative Sampling and Loss Functions |
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| 32 | Jianling Wang | 38 | 3 | 45 Quantifying and Mitigating Popularity Bias in Conversational Recommender Systems (2022) Conversational Recommendation Systems 44 Improving Top-K Recommendation via JointCollaborative Autoencoders (2019) Negative Sampling and Loss Functions |