Twitter hashtags mocking the president were still trending today after Donald Trump appeared to suggest that criticism on the platform was "illegal."
Analytics show hashtags including #TrumpleThinSkin and #ThePresidentIsACrybaby surged in popularity over the past day, hosting thousands of posts containing memes, jokes and doctored images in reaction to the president's frustrations.
"So disgusting to watch Twitter's so-called 'Trending', where [so] many trends are about me, and never a good one," Trump tweeted on Monday afternoon.
"They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend. Really ridiculous, illegal, and, of course, very unfair!" he said, criticizing a feature that is largely determined by a computer algorithm.
It was not immediately clear if the "they" in the phrase was aimed at Twitter, which is led by billionaire CEO Jack Dorsey, or referencing the users of the platform.
In the wake of his comments, #TrumpleThinSkin soared into the Top 10 trending charts on Twitter in the U.S., amassing more than 120,000 tweets, analytics show.
The hashtag #ThePresidentIsACrybaby attracted over 46,000 tweets as of today. Rising in the trends today was #LyingTrump, with over 100,000 tweets. At the time of writing, the similarly-worded hashtag #TrumpIsACrybaby was also gaining attention.
The majority of Twitter users appeared to take issue with the suggestion that criticizing the president on social media could ever be deemed unlawful in the U.S.
The White House has been contacted for clarification.
"The President of the United States, who has insulted everyone you can think of, wants you to know he thinks it's illegal to make fun of him on Twitter," tweeted @mmpadellan who claimed to have started calls to get the #TrumpleThinSkin topic trending.
The President of the United States, who has insulted everyone you can think of, wants you to know he thinks it's illegal to make fun of him on Twitter.
— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) July 27, 2020
So let's trend #trumplethinskin.
Break out your best memes, folks.
How is someone a full blown internet bully, call everyone names, spend YEARS bashing the President before him ON TWITTER, then cry about mean twitter trends? 😂😂 #TrumpleThinSkin
— Sarah Colonna (@sarahcolonna) July 28, 2020
President Trump says using insulting hashtags about him on Twitter is illegal. So don't retweet this unless you want to be arrested. #ThePresidentIsACrybaby pic.twitter.com/lH6Ue8E1Nc
— Parody Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson_MP) July 28, 2020
Good Morning @realDonaldTrump
— Christian Latino (@tostig_alvin) July 28, 2020
You are trending sir #ThePresidentIsACrybaby pic.twitter.com/78jd8iGzWA
Also surging in the U.S. trends today was #HydrochloroquineWorks, which came as the president shared a viral video containing COVID-19 misinformation, quickly spreading across Facebook and Twitter after being published by Breitbart News.
Twitter has explained that trending topics are "determined by an algorithm" and tailored based on who a person follows, their interests and their general location.
"This algorithm identifies topics popular now, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help you discover the hottest emerging topics of discussion on Twitter," it says. "The number of tweets that are related to the trends is just one of the factors the algorithm looks at when ranking and determining trends."
Broadly, the trending topics are intended to highlight popular topics of conversation that are taking place on the platform—partially based on the use of keywords.
The president has repeatedly voiced his displeasure with Twitter, which has started to flag policy-breaking content sent from his widely-followed account.
In May, the president signed an executive order that threatened to revoke Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects firms against legal action based on user content, pitching the decision as a way to combat "censorship."
The executive order read: "Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power to shape the interpretation of public events; to censor, delete, or disappear information; and to control what people see or do not see."
It came just days after the social network fact-checked one of his posts about mail-in voting as misleading. "Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!" Trump responded in a tweet at the time.
