Skip to main content

Anonymous releases Twitter tool to take over trending topics

Anonymous Twitter URGEHacktivist group Anonymous wants you to care about what they care about. So, to help spread word of their causes of choice — everything from protests of San Francisco’s public transportation system to political unrest in Syria — the loose-knit group has released a Twitter tool that allows users to “hijack” trending topics, and tweet messages within those topics, as explained in a statement by an Anonymous spokesperson.

“We recently have become tired of seeing trending topics on twitter that were redundant and ‘pop culture’ like,” writes  YourAnonNews on its Tumblr blog. “We have also grown tired of Twitter not trending hash tags that actually serve a cause and mean something to free thinkers of the world…This was pathetic in our eyes, and we could not stand by and take it anymore.”

Recommended Videos

The tool created to combat Twitter’s entertainment value is called URGE (Universal Rapid Gamma Emitter). It’s purpose: “help raise awareness of problems going on in this world and show people that real problems exist outside of ‘Jersey Shore’ and ‘Sex’.”

URGE runs on Windows and requires .Net Framework 4 to work. Along with the custom software, Anonymous has also created an official @_URGE Twitter account.

YourAnonNews says URGE will be distributed “amongst Anonymous and anyone else who cares to use this for awareness and bashing corrupt politicians.” But don’t be fooled by the software’s ability to “hijack” Twitter; the group stipulates that “[t]his is not a hacking tool nor is it an exploit tool.” Instead, “it was created to make it easier for us to tweet faster without copying and pasting constantly.”

Twitter has not yet responded to our request for comment on URGE and Anonymous’ plans to take over its trending topics.

True as that may be, we’d expect to see some strangely out of context messages in the trending topics, starting immediately.

While we can certainly empathize with Anonymous wanting to spread the word about important social causes (or, at least, the causes they deem important), it’s difficult to believe that someone who wants to check out the latest “Jersey Shore” news is going to suddenly care about the plight of Syrians just because they saw a random tweet whiz by in the trending topics stream. Sure, it could happen. But it doesn’t seem likely.

Andrew Couts
Features Editor for Digital Trends, Andrew Couts covers a wide swath of consumer technology topics, with particular focus on…
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Reddit just achieved something for the first time in its 20-year history
The Reddit logo.

Reddit’s on a roll. The social media platform has just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history, and now boasts a record 97.2 million daily active users, marking a year-over-year increase of 47%. A few times during the quarter, the figure topped 100 million, which Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders had been a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news in its third-quarter earnings results on Tuesday.

Read more
Worried about the TikTok ban? This is how it might look on your phone
TikTok splash screen on an Android phone.

The US Supreme Court has decided to uphold a law that would see TikTok banned in the country on January 19. Now, the platform has issued an official statement, confirming that it will indeed shut down unless it gets some emergency relief from the outgoing president.

“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” said the company soon after the court’s verdict.
So, what does going dark mean?
So, far, there is no official statement on what exactly TikTok means by “going dark.” There is a lot of speculation out there on how exactly the app or website will look once TikTok shutters in the US.

Read more