I am not sure why this is a problem, but I don't really use twitter. Yes, fake accounts exist. It's only twitter's problem not sure why this something the NY times would care about?
1. Twitter is selling content feeds to TV news networks. With enough bots out there your tweet may very well end up on TV.
2. It counts for SEO. I once met a guy in 2010-ish who was into casino SEO. He was running a network of ~150k FB/Twitter accounts to promote articles that quoted the oddball news outfits that quoted his clients' press releases.
3. Some people actually read what's going on on Twitter. In particular journalists and swaths of opinion leaders. See any late night show, really, for ample Twitter coverage.
4. Some people with tons of followers occasionally retweet garbage memes on Twitter, including racist videos tweeted by white supremacist UK groups that turn out to be fake.
The problem being that even if you yourself don't view or access Twitter, it is influencing, and largely for the worse, the world in which you live.
two young siblings... earn a combined $100,000 a year as influencers, working with brands such as Amazon, Disney, Louis Vuitton and Nintendo. Arabella, who is 14, tweets under the name Amazing Arabella.
But her Twitter account — and her brother’s — are boosted by thousands of retweets purchased by their mother and manager, Shadia Daho, according to Devumi records.
The idea that dubious businesses are possibly skimming money off big brands (or even more disturbingly, possibly with the knowledge of those brands) by using fake followers is interesting, and newsworthy. Add widespread identity theft into the mix, and it’s even more newsworthy.
They're just looking for any blame they can shift for their culpability in helping throw the 2016 POTUS election to Trump.