The “Trends” on Twitter are frequently baffling. Why are the hashtags #MPBMS and #TechMunch popular? You had to click through and figure it out for yourself. In 2014, when it copied Twitter’s trends, Facebook made them much better by adding human-written descriptions below so you could decide whether you cared or not. Facebook is currently removing those descriptions, claiming that it is doing so to improve the product’s scalability and personalization. Users who do not use Facebook in English may gain earlier access to Trending Topics as a result of this win. However, it is a loss for English-speaking users who could previously quickly evaluate Trends’ descriptions to determine whether they were worthwhile clicks. Everyone will be able to see Trending Topics that are even better tailored to your interests based on Pages you like, your location, Trends you have previously interacted with, and more without humans slowing down the product and driving up the price. Trending Topics will also be available in additional languages thanks to this. Sure, if you’ve got some niche interests like an extreme sport, geeky academic pursuit, or B-list celebrity, the new Trending Topics will be able to show you more hashtags about them now. However, you will no longer be able to decipher the cryptic hashtags at a glance. To see a news story, user post, or an excerpt from the trend’s original source, hover over the trends instead. Yes, Facebook, I’ve heard of those famous people. But without context for why they’re Trending, I don’t feel compelled to care
It seems like the strategy is going backwards. Facebook makes a lot of money, making over $2 billion in profits in just the last quarter. There shouldn’t be much of a problem financing the human description writers who are currently employed. Hiring scribes for a few of the other most popular languages on the planet probably wouldn’t break the bank, either.
Facebook could have chosen, on the other hand, to keep the English descriptions of major trending topics that were shown to a lot of people and just remove them when the algorithms suggested a niche trend or one for users whose languages were not supported. With 1.71 billion users, Facebook must act in the public interest. However, it is uncommon to see the company clearly reduce a product’s usability as a means of scaling.