What’s the point of these bots for a pr strategy? Just to swamp out discussion?

Yes - blue ticks appear at the top of replies and searches, and are also promoted more heavily by the algorithm, so essentially the idea is to flood Twitter (and probably search engines by association) with positive mentions of Gaiman which bury the mentions of the allegations against him.

It's a silly strategy, any sophisticated reader is going to see whats up right away. But it turns casual fans out of the discussion and pushes any real convo way down on the page. And can't discount a client insisting you do this bc they read about it on a blog and just want things to go away!