![]() ![]() Some academic studies even cite trending topics as a proxy for public opinion, apparently unaware that such trends can be manipulated rather than organic. Users are not only exposed to illicit ads, hate speech, phishing apps and topics that are irrelevant to what is trending, he said, but also see instances of the media and politicians addressing topics because they are trending on Twitter. "The high volume of inorganic activity and the company’s lack of measures to prevent it will also affect its reputation," he warned. "If trending topics fail to show what is actually trending, the users will lose trust in the mechanism and maybe the platform as a whole," said Elmas, a doctoral student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Tugrulcan Elmas, co-author of the 2019 study Ephemeral Astroturfing Attacks: The Case of Fake Twitter Trends, told Anadolu Agency those attacks "undermine the integrity of the social media platform." When determining trends, Twitter does not consider whether a tweet has been deleted, making it more vulnerable to such attacks. Since 2015, hit-and-run astroturfing attacks – using automated accounts (bots) to artificially propel a chosen keyword to the top of Twitter trending topics – have hit Turkey's 11.8 million active users and global trends. At least 47% of the Twitter trends in Turkey are fake, and 20% of those trends make up worldwide trends, according to a study by researchers in Switzerland. ![]()
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