Josh Hafner

USA TODAY

“Hillary for Prison,” an unofficial slogan among Donald Trump supporters, began trending on Twitter Monday complete with an obvious typo.

“#HillaryForPrision,” the trending hashtag read. That’s “prision” with an extra “i.” The hashtag climbed to the second trending spot in the U.S., The Wrap noted, right behind “Happy Halloween.”

Many users of the misspelled hashtag claimed that a correctly spelled version, “#HillaryForPrison,” would be filtered by Twitter censors. Inserting a typo was the only way to bypass those to make the hashtag appear in trends, they argued.

The hashtag was used as early as August 2015, but it's not clear the early use had anything to do with this week's events.

Twitter declined to comment on the accusations to USA TODAY, instead pointing to a prior statement issued to the Huffington Post, which covered allegations of Clinton-related censorship by the social media service in February.

At that time, Twitter users claimed a critical hashtag, "#WhichHillary," was denied a trending spot by the service. In reality, Twitter said, some hashtags just aren’t as widespread as users’ feeds may lead them to believe.

“As elections approach in countries around the world we hear conspiracy theories about political trend manipulation, from activists on the left, the center, and right,” a Twitter spokesman told the site.

“But the actual reason a topic doesn’t trend is because its popularity isn’t as widespread as supporters believe.”

An algorithm determines Twitter's trends based on a user's geographic location and followed accounts, the service states on its site.

On Monday, the second most prominent story in Twitter's curated "Moments" section featured Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor, making the case for Trump's candidacy. Twitter also highlighted a tweet from Donald Trump himself, who bragged last month that #TrumpWon became the top trend on the site.

So maybe Twitter’s alleged pro-Clinton filters are not so effective. Or maybe they don’t exist at all.

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