Turks manipulate trending topics in spite of Twitter

Many Turks are still manipulating “trending topics” on Twitter, mostly for political aims, despite the social media giant’s attempts to stop them, a Hürriyet columnist has revealed through an experiment.

Cengiz Semercioğlu wrote in his column Nov. 12 how his own hashtag, #CengizSE, hit the trending topic (TT) lists the previous day. “I see that any person can push a hashtag to Turkish and worldwide TT lists in 10-15 minutes,” Semercioğlu said.

A trending topic is a word or phrase that is tagged at a greater rate than other tags and it is shown in a list, global or localized, on Twitter.

Semercioğlu’s experiment started when he saw a Turkish hashtag on the worldwide TT list on Nov. 11 that mentioned a phone number based in Istanbul with the phrase, “Your Social Media Agency.”

“I called the number and Oğuz Can Güzey, the owner of a company called City Ajans, answered the phone,” Semercioğlu said. Subsequently, the company pushed Semercioğlu’s hashtag to the top of the Turkish TT list in 10 minutes and the worldwide TT list in 15 minutes for the experiment without charging a fee.

“They do it by abusing the software vulnerabilities of Twitter,” Semercioğlu added. Güzey told him that 800 accounts are enough to manipulate the TT lists. None of the accounts are hacked, though. They are real people who permit certain applications, many of which are misleading like “Who Viewed My Profile,” to tweet on behalf of them anytime.

“We’re a professional agency. We charge 250 Turkish Liras for staying on the TT list for one hour. We can keep you there for the whole day, but the price can be as high as 5,000 Turkish Liras,” Güzey said.

As can be seen live on Twitter every...