The New York Times reported that some current and former employees at Twitter had advocated for the removal of the trending list altogether to curb misinformation, particularly in the lead-up to the 2020 United States presidential election. However, the need for human nuance prevailed, and Twitter decided that it wanted to commit to trends by bringing on people with the ability and knowledge to contextualize the platform's constant stream of trending terms. In late 2019, Twitter began to experiment with providing context to trends, developing what Geary said were "some algorithmic tools" in the process. Trends have long been a contentious feature of Twitter, particularly when it comes to the potential spreading of misinformation on the platform. You know, everyone gets terribly worried every time they see Betty White's name." "People see it when they click into, and it's not always easy to tell from what the keyword is that's trending what's happening, and sometimes people can get the completely wrong idea about why something is trending.
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"Trends is one of the areas that is obviously incredibly high profile on Twitter, but can also end up with 'WTF' moments," she told Insider. Twitter descriptions aim to provide context for a constant stream of informationĪccording to Joanna Geary, the senior director of curation at Twitter, trend descriptions arose from Twitter's desire to provide more context to conversations.
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In the process, the writers have been mythologized under monikers like "Description Man," imagined as an omnipresent entity with eyes on every trending discussion on Twitter. Today trends have become central to conversation on the platform, and frequently generate conversations themselves.įor those in charge of providing context for whatever topic is taking over Twitter on a given day, writing descriptions is a process of not only understanding trends, but communicating their meaning to a general audience. Twitter first introduced trends in 2008, according to a 2010 blog post from the company. Since Twitter's public launch 15 years ago in July, trends have become a crucial part of the social media platform's ecosystem. Providing context to Twitter trends - even ones as complex as this, which invokes one of the most Tumblr-famous pieces of fan art of all time - is the primary responsibility of Twitter's trends curation team, which is staffed by teams in New York, London, and Sydney.
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The discussion was summed up in a Twitter-penned description attached to the trending topic: "The Wikipedia page for the third vice president of the United States, Aaron Burr, has been altered to include a reference to a piece of fan art depicting Thomas Jefferson wearing a chest binder depicting the face of Hatsune Miku." -char | 理恵 March 14, 2021 It wasn't even for any particular historical anniversary either. Why were a flurry of users on the platform engaging in discussion about the third vice-president of the United States almost 200 years after his death? It wasn't because of "Hamilton," the musical in which Burr is the primary antagonist. On March 14, "aaron burr" was trending on Twitter.