Updated: October 2, 2020 2:07:14 pm
On the anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, Twitter saw among its main trends: ‘Nathuram Godse zindabad’.
The surname you would expect to see trending in Gandhi Jayanti is that of Nathuram Godse. But that’s exactly what Twitter users in India woke up to on October 2, the 151st anniversary of the Father of the Nation’s birth.
# नाथूराम_गोडसे_जिंदाबाद (Nathuram Godse Zindabad) was up there as the main trend, much to the anguish of many users. But how does fringe thinking like this become a main trend, especially when Twitter has over 17 million daily users in India?
For that, you must first understand how the Twitter trending algorithm works.
How does the Twitter Trends algorithm work?
The Twitter Trending algorithm is multi-factorial and “tailored” to users based on who they follow, their interests, and their location. But in the trends tab, visible to users in the Twitter smartphone app and in the web client, there is also a trends section that shows trends that are not personalized to the user.
Twitter says, “This algorithm identifies topics that are popular now, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help you discover the hottest emerging discussion topics on Twitter.”
He adds that “the number of Tweets that are related to trends is just one of the factors the algorithm looks at when classifying and determining trends.”
But experts like data scientist Gilad Lotan have explained that this algorithm favors “sharp spikes rather than gradual sustained growth” and therefore trends are “determined by a combination of volume and how long it takes to create volume.”
A combined image shows Twitter trends in Delhi (left) and Goa at noon on October 2.
So if there are a lot of tweets using a certain hashtag in a small space of time, it will start to trend. When this activity occurs at a time when other trends are not prominent, such as early in the morning, there is a high probability that the hashtag will also become a main trend.
So what happened on October 2?
On October 2, starting at 5 a.m., as analyzed on keyhole.co, there was an increase in the number of tweets using the hashtag # नाथूराम_गोडसे_जिंदाबाद. This was at least an hour before the #MahatmaGandhi tweets started to gain momentum. And although #MahatmaGandhi is tweeted almost daily, the Twitter algorithm weighed the peak of # नाथूराम_गोडसे_जिंदाबाद.
Twitter trending data shared by keyhole.io analytics tool
By Friday, more than 80,000 tweets had used # नाथूराम_गोडसे_जिंदाबाद as of 1pm. These included tweets that complained about the trend and unrelated random tweets that attempted to take advantage of a trending hashtag, a common phenomenon on Twitter.
One of the first tweets that started the trend was @vishalurl at 1.50am, garnering over a thousand retweets and 3.5K tweets with quotes in less than 12 hours.
Among the first tweets on the subject, from @vishalurl
Among the identifiers that helped amplify the hashtag, the most prominent was * @ Harvansh_Batra *, who retweeted dozens of tweets with # नाथूराम_गोडसे_जिंदाबाद to his more than 63,000 followers, the analysis tool tweetbinder.com showed.
Twitter trending data shared by tweetbinder.com analytics tool
At least five other identifiers with more than 20,000 followers showed similar behavior, helping the hashtag trend. Verified identifiers don’t appear to have helped the trend.
While # नाथूराम_गोडसे_जिंदाबाद was trending in various places in India, there were places like Kerala where it was not prominent. In Kolkata, meanwhile, another hashtag, # नाथूराम_गोडसे_अमर_रहे (Nathuram Godse loving rahe) was trending with over 18,000 tweets.
As of 1pm, #GandhiJayanti and #MahatmaGandhi were the top trends with over 1,00,000 tweets each.
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