Just around dawn on Tuesday, at 6:21 a.m., President Donald Trump tweeted.

He mocked Congressional Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and New York Senator Chuck Schumer's protests against his recent executive order on immigration, which banned citizens from Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

Over 39,000 tweets were sent in response to the president’s words. But for many users, it was a thread mocking Trump from New Yorker and television writer Bess Kalb that soared to the top of his replies.

She pointed out how Trump failed to criticize the reason lawmakers protested, and instead, focused on calling them names.

Kalb’s responses—and ones by other writers, activists, comedians, and media companies who tweet at the president—are getting seen because of a quiet change Twitter made to the way that replies work on mobile in November.

Two months ago, if you looked at the same Tweet on mobile, you would've never seen Kalb’s tweets. After all, she sent her first reply more than 25 minutes after the president first sent his.

It didn’t matter: Kalb’s dissident tweets became some of the most seen and replied to on that thread, an experience she’s likely used to.

Since the election, Kalb's tweeted at the president dozens of times. Her sarcastic responses frequently find their way to the top of Trump’s replies, aided by a sizable fan club cheering her on. (When contacted, Kalb declined to speak on the matter for this story.)

Before November, on mobile (where the majority of Twitter activity happens) replies appeared in chronological order. It gave users thirsty to be seen by Trump’s followers an incentive to write computer scripts capable of auto-replying to Trump’s tweets far faster than anybody thumbing away on a mobile keyboard could.

If you got there first, your tweet was prominently displayed right below Trump's, garnering hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of views.

Twitter rolled out the same change to replies on its desktop version in 2015, and a representative for the company said it had always intended to bring the update to mobile. That said, it didn't hit until November 2016—a prime time for Trump bots.

Over the course of his campaign, Trump’s replies and Twitter as a whole ballooned with fake Trump supporters. The fake "bot" accounts were made to look like genuine citizens, but were actually created en masse, and ran on software programs.

It's not clear who's behind the bots, though researchers speculated they might be the creation of individual tech-savvy voters, or political action committees (PACs) in support of the president. For their part, the Trump campaign's denied that they created or paid for the bots.

It's been estimated that up to 80 percent of Trump’s Twitter traffic is perpetuated by bots, singing his praises and hawking Trump-related merchandise. The most famous item they sold was a now-infamous "Liberal Tears" mug.

Tolulope Edionwe at The Outline uncovered that the mugs were a scam, with many customers never receiving their much-desired liberal-shaming swag.

Still, the mug has become so ubiquitous that Slate figured out how long a liberal would actually have to cry to fill such a cup. That notoriety, in other words, is also a testament to how valuable being high up in Trump’s mentions can be.

Coffee out of a Liberal Tears mug just tastes better. #MyRebellionWill #Milo pic.twitter.com/O6u5sbiOwp — Scott Presler VA (@ScottPresler) December 29, 2016

As Edionwe noticed, though, the mug seems to have all but vanished from the top of Trump’s replies.

While that’s at least partially due to the fact that creating automated spambots violates Twitter’s terms of service, the bots more likely disappeared because it no longer matters if you’re the first to reply to a Trump tweet on mobile.

Twitter spokesperson told us what now determines whether a reply is featured is if the person is in your network (meaning you follow them, or know someone who follows them) or if the original tweet's author has replied.

The number of likes and responses a tweet get also likely factors in, at least according to the experience of users who've reached the top of Trump's replies.

Some users also said they think being a user who's been verified by Twitter, blue checkmark and all, might help. It'd make sense: verified accounts are almost never bots, and thus, are safer to bump toward the top.

Twitter’s change has since substantially raised the visibility of legitimate people's responses in mentions, as opposed to bots and spammers. They're making their way into Trump's replies to promote their own organizations, and to influence the president's followers for the first time.

"I couldn’t be happier that normal humans are getting heard," David G. McAfee, the founder of The Party of Reason and Progress, ( PORP ) an organization dedicated to promoting reason and sound decision-making in politics said.

"My entire philosophy revolves around exposing all ideas to scrutiny, and that doesn't work if anonymous twitter bots are dominating the conversation with a pro-Trump agenda," McAfee said.

McAfee cleverly started replying to Trump in order to promote PORP’s values, and his tweets are frequently displayed right below the president's. His approach is free, of course, and arguably much more effective than purchasing advertisements.

Image: Screenshot/twitter

"We would normally do this via other more traditional channels, but this isn’t a traditional president. We have to take the fight to Twitter because it’s the only way to guarantee we reach him and his supporters," McAfee explained.

Media companies have also noticed how valuable it can be to score a prominent spot right below Trump's words. "It's like digital town hall sometimes," Katrine Dermody, the Director of Social Media for Fusion said.

"A lot of people were surprised with the election results," she explained. "We started asking ourselves more critically how we could expand beyond what people call the echo chamber of media."

One way was to tweet articles and videos at the president that contradict or disagree with what he says, in the hopes of reaching people who agree with Trump, or don't know much about what he Tweets. "We had to figure out how to rebut what he was saying," Dermody said.

Trump's replies will continue to be an important space in a media landscape that's increasingly fractured along partisan lines. It's one of the only places left where you can find people who voted both ways.

Neil Gorsuch is hostile to women's healthcare, supports philosophies that could rescind LGBT rights https://t.co/8lSUpJec8p @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/E63hHEJGRQ — Fusion (@Fusion) February 1, 2017

Regular citizens like Justin Hendrix, a New York City resident that works in tech and media, have also seen their responses hit a chord with Trump's followers.

"As someone who disagrees vehemently with this person [Trump] I feel it’s valuable to respond to him," Hendrix said. "It’s like a media channel, and you can literally get right in there."

He admitted that although tweeting at the president "sometimes seems to have the effect of spreading information," it also means having to deal with the wrath of Trump's supporters.

Every user we spoke to that's tried to reach the top of Trump’s replies said that they're the victim of relentless abuse. They’ve received death threats, been doxxed , and have discovered malicious impersonators pretending to be them on other sites like 4chan.

Still, for some, the abuse is worth weathering.

"People say Trump doesn't read the replies," Hendrix said, "In my heart I don't believe that."

"I can't imagine that he doesn't occasionally scroll through those responses."

UPDATE: Feb. 2, 2017, 3:36 p.m. EST This article has been updated with additional information from Twitter.