Weighted Content Distribution System for Privacy Protection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Content publishing systems fail to ensure user privacy when providing information to content provider systems, leading to a loss of subscribers and revenue due to inferred user attributes.
Innovation Solution
A content publishing system receives weights from content provider systems based on user interactions and uses these weights to select and deliver content items, generating aggregated reports that prevent the extraction of specific user information, thus maintaining user privacy.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the content publishing system provides user information to content provider systems for targeted content distribution, then content distribution effectiveness is improved, but user privacy is compromised allowing inference of user attributes
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary mechanism (weighted selection system) between the content publishing system and content provider systems. Instead of directly sharing user information, the system uses weight values assigned to users by content providers to select content, acting as a mediator that achieves targeted distribution without exposing user attributes. This resolves the contradiction by enabling effective content distribution while maintaining user privacy through the intermediary weighting mechanism.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts only the necessary weighting information from user data while leaving sensitive user attributes hidden. Content provider systems assign weights to users based on their attributes, but only these aggregated weight values are transmitted to the content publishing system. The actual user information (demographics, behavior patterns) remains extracted and hidden, achieving content distribution effectiveness without privacy loss.
2Loss of information
If the content publishing system does not provide user information to content provider systems to maintain privacy, then user privacy is protected, but content distribution effectiveness decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The weighting system serves as an intermediary that bridges the gap between privacy protection and effective content distribution. Content provider systems can assign weights reflecting user preferences and attributes without the content publishing system having access to actual user information. This intermediary mechanism maintains privacy while still enabling differentiated content distribution based on user characteristics.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms user attribute information into a different parameter form (weights) that preserves the essential distribution logic while removing sensitive information. Instead of using raw user attributes for content selection, the system uses transformed weight parameters that capture user characteristics in an anonymized form, maintaining distribution effectiveness without compromising privacy.
3Reliability
If the content publishing system uses targeted content distribution based on user attributes, then content relevance to users is improved, but user information security is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential weighting signals needed for content relevance while leaving user information secure. Content provider systems extract weight values from user attributes locally, and only these extracted weights are transmitted. The harmful exposure of user information is avoided while the beneficial content relevance is maintained through the extracted weight parameters.
Solution Approach 2:
The weighting mechanism acts as an intermediary layer that ensures content relevance without compromising user information security. It mediates between the need for targeted content delivery and the requirement for information security by transforming user characteristics into secure weight representations that enable relevant distribution without exposing sensitive data.
Data Source
AI summary
A content publishing system receives content items from content provider systems for providing to users. The content publishing system further receives mapping tables from the content provider systems specifying weights for users of the content provider systems. The content publishing system provides content items to users based on the user specific weights received from the content provider systems. As a result, a content provider system can identify users that are likely to be interested in specific content items and assigns weights to these users to adjust the likelihood of the users receiving appropriate content items via the content publishing system.