System and method for processing an observed bipartite graph that has a plurality of user nodes, a plurality of item nodes, and an observed graph topology that defines edges connecting at least some of the user nodes to some of the item nodes such that at least some nodes have node neighbourhoods comprising edge connections to one or more other nodes. A plurality of random graph topologies are derived that are realizations of the observed graph topology by replacing the node neighbourhoods of at least some nodes with the node neighbourhoods of other nodes. A non-linear function is trained using the plurality of user nodes, plurality of item nodes and plurality of random graph topologies to learn user node embeddings and item node embeddings for the plurality of user nodes and plurality of item nodes, respectively.