Facebook 'trend' isn't always what you think

Here's the thing about Facebook's bar of “trending” topics: It's basically news aggregation, representing itself as a data point. It looks like a neutral platform — and, to some extent, allows its users to interpret it as one — but humans play a role in what you see and don't see.

That disconnect was crystallized by a story from Gizmodo that said some of Facebook's “news curators” — the humans who work on Facebook's trends — are keeping some conservative news outlets and topics out of the trending bars. Facebook issued a denial of many of those claims. There's now a Senate committee inquiry. Facebook's trending bar was, itself, trending on Facebook as a result of their reporting.

Right now, a lot of attention is going toward the question of whether Facebook is “suppressing” conservative points of view, itself a loaded issue, because many mainstream news organizations are accused of the same by conservatives. There's something worth examining here: a misunderstanding about what “trending” means.

Essentially, the common perception of what Facebook's trends were, and how they work, were standing on two sides of a very wide canyon that most people didn't even know was there.

Facebook's description of its trending bar doesn't dissuade readers from thinking that the trending process is automated. Its description doesn't say anything about the role of curators.

So it's easy to understand why, on one side, the popular assumption is that the trending list represents the results of an algorithm, with minimal human involvement. On the other side, it's complicated: The algorithm guides what ends up on the bar, but human beings are responsible for making sense of what the algorithm is saying.

Given what we know about how information — particularly bad — can circulate on Facebook, it shouldn't be that surprising that the “trending” topics Facebook shows you aren't the result of a “pure” algorithm. Tarleton Gillespie examined this disconnect in response to Gizmodo's report, noting:

“In many ways, a trending algorithm can be an enormous liability, if allowed to be: It could generate a list of dreadful or depressing topics; it could become a playground for trolls who want to fill it with nonsense and profanity; it could reveal how little people use Facebook to talk about matters of public importance; it could reveal how depressingly little people care about matters of public importance; and it could help amplify a story critical of Facebook itself.”

Gizmodo's report was so explosive that it ended up trending on Facebook. But no matter how this shakes out, it's good for us, because it's becoming harder to see a bar of “trends” on a site like Facebook without thinking about how they got there.

Abby Ohlheiser is a Washington Post writer.