Thread by @conspirator0

#WhyRepublicansAreJumpingShip trended for a few hours today (August 29th, 2020). Where did it come from?

cc: @ZellaQuixote

The first account to tweet #WhyRepublicansAreJumpingShip, @Evi1Geniu5, has an interesting behavior pattern: it tweets a given hashtag several times over the course of a few minutes and then never tweets it again. What's going on?

The answer lies in a hashtag game app/network known as @HashtagRoundup. New hashtags are debuted at scheduled times by specified accounts, and users receive a notification so they may participate and attempt to get the hashtag to trend should they so choose.

We downloaded the last week or so's worth of tweets containing @HashtagRoundup hashtags (82 hashtags total, we may have missed a few). Very little of the traffic appears to be automated, but often shows rhythmic spikes due to debuting the hashtags at scheduled times.

The @HashtagRoundup hashtags are generally launched at the top of the hour (sometimes at half past), and frequently trend: 22 of 82 (26.8%) of the hashtags we analyzed trended in at least one of the 24 countries for which we're monitoring trends.

Retweet networks for the 82 @HashtagRoundup hashtags, both with and without today's #WhyRepublicansAreJumpingShip spike. Both charts feature a dense cluster of regular @HashtagRoundup users alongside one or more looser clusters of political accounts.

We of course were unable to resist having @DrunkAlexJones participate in several @HashtagRoundup hashtags. A few of them got retweeted by the accounts that launched the hashtags in question.