claim: Joseph Merrick's was the subject of thousands of hate tweets.
evidence: Twitter -LRB- -LSB- ˈtwɪtər -RSB- -RRB- is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages , `` tweets '' , restricted to 140 characters .. news. news. social networking. social networking service. characters. character ( computing ). Registered users can post tweets , but those who are unregistered can only read them .. Registered. User registration. Users access Twitter through its website interface , SMS or a mobile device app .. SMS. Short Message Service. app. Application software. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco , California , United States , and has more than 25 offices around the world .. San Francisco. San Francisco. California. California. United States. United States. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey , Noah Glass , Biz Stone , and Evan Williams and launched in July .. Jack Dorsey. Jack Dorsey. Noah Glass. Noah Glass ( Twitter ). Biz Stone. Biz Stone. Evan Williams. Evan Williams ( Internet entrepreneur ). The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity .. In 2012 , more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day , and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day .. search queries. Web search query. In 2013 , it was one of the ten most-visited websites and has been described as `` the SMS of the Internet '' .. Internet. Internet. SMS. Short Message Service. most-visited websites. List of most popular websites. As of 2016 , Twitter had more than 319 million monthly active users .. 319 million monthly active users. List of virtual communities with more than 100 million active users. On the day of the 2016 U.S. presidential election , Twitter proved to be the largest source of breaking news , with 40 million election-related tweets sent by 10 p.m. -LRB- Eastern Time -RRB- that day .. news. news. 2016 U.S. presidential election. United States presidential election, 2016. Eastern Time. Eastern Time