#GE0215: Everyone's saying they've voted in an election that happened 1,800 years ago

The erroneous hashtag isn't a symptom of stupidity, confusion or time travel — just Twitter's trending topics algorithm

Andrew Griffin
Thursday 07 May 2015 20:25 BST
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A reporter live streams via a twitter as Defence Secretary Michael Fallon gives a press conference on April 9, 2015 in London
A reporter live streams via a twitter as Defence Secretary Michael Fallon gives a press conference on April 9, 2015 in London

Twitter users took to the site today to tell voters that they had voted in an election that happened 1,800 years ago. A collective typo pushed the hashtag #GE0215 up into Trending Topics, leading to confusion and mockery.

But the trend isn’t a reflection of collective confusion or time travel — Trending Topics don’t just reflect how many tweets are being sent around a certain word or phrase, but also factor in whether that hashtag’s usage has surged in recent days. With the influx of general election tweets, there’s more use of every hashtag, and so more chance of mistakes.

If Twitter didn’t separate quickly-rising trends from those that are always in use, some topics such as One Direction or “just saying” would stay permanently trending. So Twitter picks out the ones that are becoming quickly popular, which means that sometimes trending topics can be not especially heavily-used but just surging at that time.

The problem hit even the most austere of Twitter users, including The Times. (Though since more people could now be clicking on the #GE0215 hashtag, it’s likely that tweeting using that could have more impact than the real one.)

Most of the tweets are still genuine mistakes — though the snark is presumably on its way now that the hashtag has made its way to Twitter’s Trending Topics. But some got in early to mock those that had got the date 1,800 years wrong.

Hashtag confusion has plagued this election, with Twitter users never really deciding which to use. While #GE2015 has become the most commonly used one — and is the hashtag endorsed by Twitter — #GeneralElection and other related terms are still being tweeted.

Twitter is also encouraging the use of another hashtag today: #IVoted. That has been set up with its own “hashflag”, so that when users tweet it, a little cross in a box will come up next to the word.

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