It's worth keeping in mind that the interview is heavily edited and Ronson is being a bit disingenuous at several points, pretending to not understand things th

It's worth keeping in mind that the interview is heavily edited and Ronson is being a bit disingenuous at several points, pretending to not understand things that he almost certainly must. David Bausola isn't so much an academic as some sort of artist/marketer combo. He's done some interesting Twitter bot things in the past. Strange and odd, but interesting. I've followed him and his experiments for years now, and it's just one of his things. I think he, at least, is genuinely interested in online identities and how people present themselves through Twitter and other social media. I don't believe at all he's a troll, though I do think his fascination with Ronson's responses is rather cold and clinical, and a bit more empathy would be appropriate. Having said all that, obviously they should have taken down the bot when Ronson was upset by it. My suspicion is they saw an opportunity to talk about what they do and get an audience for it, and they exploited that. Which is, of course, the wrong thing to do.