It would actually be quite interesting to know what Twitter HQ thinks about this. Obviously they are against embarrassing NYT stories; but bot farming in general must be a conflicted area for them: on the minus side, it offers an opportunity to give money to people who aren’t them in order to obtain prominent placement on Twitter; and if it gets too blatant it will presumably breed scepticism about the value of Twitter among potential buyers of placement, ads, VC rounds, etc. but on the plus side if they can cull the most egregious fakes the bot farmers are basically juicing their MAUs for them; a service they appear to be in dire need of.
If, hypothetically, they had a mechanism with perfect powers of discernment, rather than whatever heuristics they have slapped together; how much bot activity do we suspect they would permit? Shut them all down? Permit the ones that are putting enough effort in to retain plausible deniability when using those bots to boost their own numbers?
