Does anyone have any suggestions for how to design a Twitter clone that can prevent this at any cost? it seems like a pervasive issue in every single social network.
Half baked thought; what about a linkedin style connection graph where your feed is only populated by those in your network, and it is trivial to see and disconnect from whoever introduced the bot into your network. Would a community self regulate if bots became actually contagious
The bots pay monthly for a blue checkmark so that they're promoted to the top of the replies. A small cost does not appear to have been a meaningful disincentive, especially when scammers can easily make that money back and political operatives can easily bankroll that.
$5 is enough for a human to glance at the feed and mute it if it seems bad. The trouble with $0 is you can create a million bots and no one has time to look at them.
I wouldn't mind something like that. When I joined Whatsapp it cost $1 for life and I thought that was a good system. Sadly it's gone, replaced by free but ad funded.