Paper authors noted in their discussion that there were limitations to interpretations
of the study, particularly given the
potential for anthropomorphism (projecting human traits onto animals) and owner
bias, and that further
investigations independent
of owner interpretation are required.
While Facebook's internal
investigation supposedly found no evidence
of this, it made stiff changes to how Trends were surfaced, and moved to a mostly algorithm - driven system to reduce the
potential human
bias.