This started me thinking of a little game - what post with the limitations of 140 characters could you post that would trigger the attention of the most bots for automatic retweets/likes?
It's on my to do list, when bored, but I'd imagine others have had comparable thoughts and may of already had a go.
Anybody got any other examples?
There's a reason for that. Twitter offers an API to get a massive stream of tweets. They used to provide it in various sizes, leading up to what was called the "firehose". Now they only have a streaming API with filtering (but gets a very small, but constant random sample of tweets), and the "firehose", which is all of them -- and you have to pay for it through a third party partnered with Twitter. When you're doing large-scale datamining, the firehose can be invaluable, albeit expensive (Depends, but is anywhere between $300-$6000/month). But bot makers don't always have that kind of scratch, so they will just consume the public API, which is generally good enough.
It used to kill the usefulness of your notifications for at least a day. ;)
the trump astroturfing army is aggressive
If anyone actually can't tell try this and give an analysis of your experience with the Hateful People of america