It was alleged that bot nets would try and dilute politically motivated trends by blasting out a hashtag that was one letter off- for example #podasta instead o

It was alleged that bot nets would try and dilute politically motivated trends by blasting out a hashtag that was one letter off- for example #podasta instead of #podesta. Then 'real' users who started typing would autofill with the false one and the topic would lose steam quicker. Of course, without knowing Twitters proprietary algorithms, this is all just anecdotal.