As you said, I am sure we do differ in philosophy - I feel like your dislike of things you can't customize to make them more useful to yourself and the idea tha

As you said, I am sure we do differ in philosophy - I feel like your dislike of things you can't customize to make them more useful to yourself and the idea that "if a user goes looking for an option to change something that annoys them in the interface, then the interface is getting in the way of the user" (in addition to the other arguments; I won't bore you by quoting all of them :) to be missing the forest for the trees. The motivation that I admire behind this feature (and I presume that you do not) is making a choice that makes some (most? all?) users uncomfortable (surprised? annoyed?) because they believe it will make the service better (in the most broad sense possible). People being aware of what is trending has the potential to keep people abreast of up-to-the-second current affairs, thoughts that are permeating the community, and ideas that similar people have that you may find intriguing. The community also has a prevailing interest in Twitter making money, since if it folds, the community ceases to exist (this is for values of community contained in "people currently using Twitter") and any good Twitter Co. can provide ceases to increase. Are these good enough reasons to introduce a truly hateful piece of UI? I don't think so. I'm glad they're willing to make decisions for reasons like the ones above, even if I think this one was not a good one. I personally am unconvinced trending topics can be introduced well, but I don't think introducing unpopular things is bad, especially when it's unpopular for the reasons you've stated.