2025年4月25日（周五） 

10:30-12:00

刘文静教授

清华大学

In the evermore thriving creator economy, content recommendation algorithms play a crucial role in determining what is relevant and popular on social media platforms. In response, many creators have developed various practices to take advantage of these algorithms. One novel and prevalent practice is explicitly seeking help from algorithms in the posts, such as saying, “Algorithms please show this to young women.” Across seven studies (including a field study, a large-scale social survey, and five online experiments, two pre-registered), we consistently find that this practice can harm actual consumer responses and marketing outcomes, deviating from what the creators originally intended. This occurs because consumers perceive creators seeking help from algorithms as implementing platform optimization, and infer intentionality from their actions. Furthermore, we identify the purpose of seeking help as a key moderator, whereby the negative effect of this practice is attenuated when creators do so for others’ interests (vs. self-interest). This research not only contributes to research on creators’ algorithm-leveraging practices, platform optimization, and inferred creator intentionality, but also offers insights into how creators can leverage algorithms more wisely.