Twitter's new trend feature has backfired when they annotated the trending #FeministsAreUgly hashtag, a movement with a positive intention started last August by two feminists, with the headline "Ugly Feminists Freak Out Over #FeministsAreUgly Hashtag."
According to the Verge, the headline appears to have been taken from an article published last August by The Inquisitr. On following the link, found prominently displayed on Twitter's mobile search option, users took to the hashtag itself. The effect made it look as though the headline represented Twitter's official take on the subject.
Twitter has responded to the problem by removing the tag from its trending lists entirely, rather than change the headline used to represent the hashtag.
The #FeministsAreUgly hashtag does not appear in the top 10 for trending topics in the US or worldwide.
The #FeministsAreUgly hashtag first appeared in August 2014, created and propagated by two Twitter users who tweeted selfies alongside the tag in a bid to subvert stereotypes about feminists. Many users were hesitant about the source of the hashtag, believing it to be a creation of a misogynist user. Feminists argued that it placed too much importance on their physical appearance.
Unlike feminists who want to have a discussion about skewed concepts of beauty and physical standards, Twitter's new trend feature designed to inform them about the world has called hundreds of thousands of users 'ugly.