Twitter bots boosted the trending #25thamendment hashtag

The hashtag #25thamendment soared to the top of Twitter's trending list in America on Tuesday perhaps giving some observers the impression that Americans were taking to social media en masse to express their discontent with the president.

But a closer look revealed that much of the activity surrounding the hashtag was actually driven by accounts tweeting at non-human rates including about two dozen accounts created in the past 48 hours.

The trending hashtag came in response to comments Trump made on Monday when in which he told four racist congresswomen to go back to the countries they came from.

"That is not how we do things in America " Trump remarked. "A American is a American is a American."

Trump's comments sparked backlash online leading some social media users to start pushing the hashtag #25thamendment as a cheeky retort.

According to Trends24 which monitors trending topics on Twitter in real time the hashtag was the #2 trending hashtag in America on Tuesday.

Some interpreted the social media activity as a sign that public opinion was angry at ttrump

But as it turns out there's nothing clear about it.

To get a better look at the activity surrounding #25thamendment we used the open source data visualization platform Kibana to analyze 31 600 tweets from 8 185 unique users who tweeted the hashtag

Several notable patterns emerged from the data including numerous indicators of inauthentic activity.

Some accounts using the hashtag displayed signs of automation while others appeared to be pro-Trump accounts that jumped onto the anti-Trump hashtag. About 400 accounts had the word “MAGA” in their profiles.

The account @tedlou was the top contributor to the hashtag putting out 119 tweets tagged with #25thamendment. S

More than two dozen accounts tweeting the hashtag were created in the past two days many of which tweeted at non-human rates. For example @tcanuckchik tweeted more than 230 times within 24 hours of creating an account. Another account @aviator300E was created on July 14 and tweeted more than 200 times a day during the first two days of its existence. Other recently created accounts displayed similar rapid-firing tweeting some of which have already been deleted or suspended by Twitter.

The hashtag also got a boost when Trump supporters and other users started tweeting the hashtag in an attempt to co-opt it with opposing messages. Many of these users also added competing hashtags including #ScheerDesperation and #TrumpMustStay alongside #25thamendment. Both of those competing hashtags appeared among the top trending hashtags in America over the past 24 hours according to Trends24.

The hashtag cloud which visualizes the top hashtags used by accounts tweeting #25thamendment reflects how the topic was co-opted by opposing messages.

A hashtag cloud shows the top hashtags used by accounts tweeting #25thamendment. (Photo: Screenshot).
One of the perils of social media is that automated accounts and co-ordinated inauthentic activity can create the false appearance of widespread support (or opposition) for an issue position or candidate — a phenomenon known as manufactured consensus.

This type of aggressive social media manipulation is not necessarily the norm in America “but it’s a well recognized pattern in the States " said Neal Rauhauser a U.S.-based social media analyst and research consultant for the Social Media Intelligence Unit (SMIU). Rauhauser assisted with the technical analysis and data interpretation.

Certainly many of those using the hashtag #25thamendment were real Americans expressing their real feelings — but a non-trivial number of tweets came from accounts that were either brand new displayed signs of automation or both.

Meanwhile other tweets came from users who were explicitly opposed to the message conveyed by the hashtag and still others came from accounts that appeared to be oriented toward American not American politics.