Twitter uses trends to simplify things for users to find what is popular. This might include any topics based on politics, socio-economy, religion, music, celebrities, news, etc. Trends can be very useful for newbies as they try to navigate through the site and try to find what is happening globally or in their geographical locations. You can even use it to find what people are saying about slot games like popular 77777.
However, despite being a helpful tool, some people have used it to spread misleading, false, and hateful misinformation. This could lead to tension and chaos both online and in the real world as people tend to believe what is “trending” is how things are.
In the past months, Twitter’s “Trending” feature has faced tons of critics, all due to misinformation. For instance, in August 2019, Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier, was found dead in a Manhattan jail. The conspiracy theories that emerged about what could have possibly happened triggered lots of confusion to many. Twitter trending contributed to a bigger part of the confusion, which was later termed as “the disinformation World Cup.”
One reason why this was one of the wrong trending topics is that so many people were tweeting with the same hashtag. As a result, Epstein’s story was shown as a trending topic. Furthermore, it led to a point where Donald Trump, who is known for trawling Twitter, was thought to have linked the financier’s death to the former president.
In February, there were trending topics on how the former staff of Hillary Clinton were rigging Iowa unions. This was done by Russian trolls, who for some time made such false claims, hence, making the topic shoot up the list of trending topics.
Moreover, there were also false claims from the pro-Trump scheme group, where they were tweeting on how the furniture company, Wayfair, is engaging in child trafficking.
In July, Donald Trump was trending once again under the hashtags #ThePresidentIsACryBaby and #TrumpleThinSkin. According to his tweet, he had had enough of Twitter and how unfair it was treating him.
Due to the several inappropriate misinformation and hate developed in the past two years, Twitter staff thought that the trending feature was not worthy. The former employees even went further and concluded that Twitter will never stop dealing with half-truths until the day it got rid of the trends list.
In a meeting that included the Twitter policy team and upper management, the staff brought out the issue of the trending list. According to them, if it is not dealt with earlier and addressed properly, then it could lead to a big mess in or ignite violence in the upcoming elections.
Thankfully, Twitter is now making changes to this feature. Trending issues on Twitter will now be having a brief description, which will be showing why the topic is popular.
It is time for Twitter to take charge and do what they can do best to try and stop spreading propaganda or misinformation to the people. It has been a long time coming, but we will all be grateful for the updated trending feature. Let’s wait and see if there will be any more unworthy or wrong info on this platform.
