Why Twitter still has those terrible trends

When Twitter introduced a new feature called Trends in mid-2008, the company’s cofounder Jack Dorsey described it as an evolution of the morning media diet. Where he might once have gained a sense of what was important in the world by reading newspapers or online media, Dorsey wrote in a short blog post, Trends, “at a glance,” allowed him to “see what the world considers important in this moment, which lights a path to explore what matters to me.” 

Trends has changed its look since then. There are still ranked lists of topics trending nationally and worldwide, but some of the topics people see are customized to their interests and locations. These days, Twitter attaches representative tweets or adds context to some topics. 

So what’s important to the world right now? #ClimateScam trended last Friday and drove users to a river of memes about climate change from those who insist it’s a hoax. Earlier this week, “Sodom and Gomorrah” trended in the US, fueled by far-right anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theorists. The term “Satanic Panic” spiked soon after, along with the name of Ashli Babbitt, a woman who was killed during the attempted coup on January 6, 2021, and has become the center of conspiracy theories about the circumstances of her death. 

It’s hardly new to point out that algorithmic trending lists can amplify bad stuff to huge audiences. So why does Twitter still have this feature in 2022? 

Twitter’s central argument for Trends has not changed much since Dorsey’s blog post. It’s a feature, Twitter spokeswoman Lindsay McCallum said in an email, that’s designed to show people what’s happening across the world and on Twitter at any moment in time. When it works best, Trends become something like online events: “Choco Taco” trending after the ice cream treat was discontinued prompts others to tweet their own thoughts about it. 

Trends is central to the story that Twitter would like to tell about itself, says Shireen Mitchell, a technology analyst and founder of Stop Online Violence Against Women—a story about how it captures and serves the public conversation. But manipulated trends (even innocuous ones) and amplified extremism on the algorithmically generated trending list undermine that story. 

“Twitter keeps trying to make it seem like ‘trending’ is somehow authentic, trending hot topics that people care about. But in most instances it’s gamification,” she says. 

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