I think that whole deal is more about conditioning people to pay, even a small amount, until asked for more. I highly doubt it has anything to do with bots. Some might say it’s to gather IDs - which could be true as well but I’m not sure what the “market” for that looks like. Plenty of other ways to find IDs like leaked credit scores. Twitter audience isn’t even that big compared to other platforms. I’m inclined to believe it’s for conditioning.