From Engagement to Empowerment: A Capability-Theoretic Rethinking of Recommender Systems

Recommender systems (RS) increasingly mediate access to crucial life spheres like employment and education, yet most remain optimized for short-term engagement rather than long-term user empowerment. While recent trustworthy RS research has addressed fairness, diversity, and transparency, these efforts remain fragmented, often targeting specific pipeline stages in isolation and lacking a unifying framework to realize their aggregated potential. This paper argues that the Capability Approach (CA) provides this necessary unifying framework, offering normative common ground to guide concrete interventions. Our contribution is twofold. First, we introduce a formal mapping between RS components and CA constructs, revealing structural and recursive gaps that constrain users' real opportunities. Second, we complement this theoretical analysis with actionable design and evaluation implications. We conclude by outlining a research agenda that acknowledges practical implementation challenges and calls for interdisciplinary interventions to pursue genuine user empowerment.