I always assumed that the "hard time" was fictional. That is, social media platforms could find and ditch bots easily, but there's some benefit (probably moneta

I always assumed that the "hard time" was fictional. That is, social media platforms could find and ditch bots easily, but there's some benefit (probably monetary) to the platform. I suppose the benefit could take the form of a bribe of the Right People. I've thought this ever since it was revealed that Uunet had a high dollar contract with Serdar Argic's humans. Later we found out Uunet had many pink contracts with spammers. I believe a lot of early ISPs has such contracts. This doesn't answer why, or how spammers and bot herders make money, though.