- Twitter is able to show users personalized trends based on a trove of personal information, including your location, who you follow, and interests it discerns from your account activity.
- Multiple Twitter users discovered in December that their "trends for you" tab included the address of a high school in Scottsdale, Arizona, although less than 50 tweets using the address appeared recently on the platform.
- Twitter told Business Insider that the trending address was a "bug," but it raises questions about how closely the platform monitors its trends and what sensitive or misleading information could be shown on these lists of personalized trends.
- These trends have been "hacked" by users with bad intentions to spread porn, as well as misleading information during the 2016 presidential election. The trending of the high school address may show how easy it is to influence these trends, and whether Twitter is aptly prepared for the 2020 election.
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On a mild Thursday afternoon in December, students at a high school in Scottsdale, Arizona, were slogging through the second half of their class schedule. They likely had no idea their school was of interest to a smattering of people around the United States, who suddenly saw the high school's address surfaced on Twitter.
Among trending hashtags celebrating Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday and making fun of a political party's misspelling of Brexit, the address of Coronado High School appeared in December in my Twitter's "trends for you" list, a continually updated personalized catalog of trending terms that Twitter thinks are of particular interest to me and other people on Twitter with similar interests. Curious about the address (which won't be mentioned in this story for privacy reasons), I clicked on the trend to discover what Twitter indicated everyone was talking about.
However, tweets mentioning the address were hard to find, unlike the thousands of tweets that typically show up under a trending topic. But I wasn't the only one stumped by this trending address - so were a 16-year-old in Georgia, a student attending Occidental College, an employee at an ad agency in downtown Detroit, and others who are all seemingly unconnected.
What Business Insider discovered from this trending discrepancy draws into question the opaque process in how Twitter manages and monitors its trending topics. It also raises concerns about whether Twitter is aptly prepared for the 2020 presidential election, after 2016's race was marred by bot accounts who were successful in spreading fake news and influencing voter opinion by manipulating the platform's "trending" topics.
