Australian stats bureau deploys a bot to harvest Twitter IDs

Trust the ABS to use this. They've consistently shown they have zero cognition of the criticism levelled at them.

But how are these kind of bots even a thing, for anyone? I can't think of a single case where it's a good idea to fire off automated tone-deaf social media replies that ignores negative sentiment.

This is the 21st century version of "your call is important to us, please hold".

"This is egregious stupidity". That aptly describes the ABS from what I hear. Now where do I get one of these bots from.