There's an interesting issue here. Because Twitter makes no real effort to block bots currently, it's still reasonably possible to detect bots with at least a f

There's an interesting issue here. Because Twitter makes no real effort to block bots currently, it's still reasonably possible to detect bots with at least a fair degree of accuracy. That's because they have no major reason to do anything beyond fool the lowest common denominator. But as you add checks, particularly convenient and handy little instant checks like this, you incentivize the bots to become more intelligent. And it's not exactly difficult to fake being a human when you're limited to 140 characters in a mostly unidirectional shout box. So the net result is that you just end up with bots more able to tolerate inspection, and thus more likely to fool even more people. --- As for Twitter themselves, in spite of their rhetoric they are going to love bots. It helps maintain an extremely healthy critical mass, results in that all so addictive rapid feedback of social media, and also inflates their numbers for advertisers. So long as they put on a song and dance about cracking down on bots, they can sell maximally inflated usage and activity numbers with plausible deniability if they turn out incorrect.