ABSTRACT
Twitter, unlike most social media platforms, has a rich history of openly automated accounts. Any social media platform of a significant size will have automated accounts posting spam—but Twitter also has automated accounts posting generated poetry, art, fiction and much more not easily categorized. A big reason this is the case is Twitter’s early focus on encouraging developers to work with its APIs (and subsequent legacy of permissive policies towards automated accounts)—but it’s also because of the format of Twitter. Each tweet is a small thing, jumbled into the timeline. It’s easier to generate something meaningful and interesting if it’s short and can gain strength from the tweets surrounding it.
