Snow or no snow!

Well obviously, anything internet-voted on or user-generated will be messed with (Just ask Hummer who had their user generated ads tell the world how terrible they were for the environment). When you let the internet vote they will name a boat "Boaty McBoatface", and countless other pranks.

I'm not sure there's a much better way to gather colloquial language from teenagers, unless you try it out with select teenage users only, in exchange for discounts on Microsoft gear. You know like "Oh dad's buying you this phone, would you like 10% discount and you chat with Tay sometimes?".
They're looking to gather data, for free, and that's when human-kind naturally start messing shit up: "oh, I'm giving you something for nothing? Here have my lulziest trolls. At least now I am amused." Everyone is in it for themselves, after all.

Timeline for the tape, just to be clear:

Jun. 24, 2015 Gawker won a suit against the FBI and got to read the investigation around the tapes.
Jul 2 2015 The Hulk Trial delayed - it was set to begin Monday that week.
Jul 24, 2015 The National Enquirer (linked in article above) released the "racist rant" tape. WWE responded by terminating Hulk Hogan's contract.

As we say in Swedish "det där var en händelse som ser ut som en tanke" (That was an event that looks like a thought). Denton gets FBI files (including tapes, as Denton says that's when he knew the reason for the suit), and then tapes mysteriously find their way to other rags. Now, the AP and other press filed to unseal all the sealed files and once that's done we will presumably know what tapes came from where.

Our first mention of the suit here was the 18 July 2015.