How to examine what a facebook 'topic' encapsulates? - facebook

Question

When selecting topics for facebook ads, many are duplicates. If my experience with databases has taught me anything, it's that humans enter data in all sorts of ways. So I guess facebook's algorithms have found 'topics' based on how humans have entered them. So I guess duplicates could result because of a trailing space or something like that.
From the UI, I cannot tell the difference between topics which appear identical, but which may have very different followings (e.g. one may have 10m associated users, another might just have 100 if it's an uncommon typo with a trailing space).
How can I view more information on facebook 'topics'? Is there an API call for this?
Example
Here is an example of a duplicate topic
Here's where the topics can be found (requires login)
NB: as a corollary to the above, when there are duplicates (or triplets) is it beneficial to select all of them, or is selecting just one enough to maximise the effect?

Answer 1

You can find the solution by creating an ad from the Business Manager. Short answer is that the duplicates belong to different categories.
In your case, if you look for "Sonic drive-in", Facebook will give you the following choices (see pic):
Sonic drive-in as interest (e.g. to target those who like a related page)
Stackoverflow as an employer (to target those working there)
So, it depends on what you need for your ads.