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I think there may be a different approach: let spammers (aka bots) flourish and let users upvote the most helpful ones.

In short: 1. Create a second type of Twitter account for bots. 2. Give users the ability to opt out entirely of seeing bot replies. 3. Give users the ability to upvote helpful automated replies.

I wrote a blog post with this suggestion a while ago: http://www.readwritehack.com/how-twitter-can-win-back-develo...

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I think you'll find that the spammers won't actually be that keen on officially registering as a bot.

Offering spammers a regulated way of reaching a mass audience also gives Twitter the ability to be much more aggressive in shutting down accounts who pose as real users.

If you ask users "Do you want robots to be able to send you spam? Yes/No", pretty much all of them will say No.

Hence bot-owners won't be that keen on officially registering as bots.

Isn't it a trivial task to automate twitter account creation? Shutting down christinanik2883 because she didn't register as a Botified Citizen doesn't do anything about jonnyi9032 or shellystack48799823.

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