Agreed, while there are tons of spambots, they are likely scraping Web API and using some backdoor-ish thing to get around requirements than using the documented API.

This announcement and today's ban-wave that followed seemed like someone not accustomed to Twitter just knew there are bots, and thought it to be workable idea to sample global timeline and script ban duplicates, which of course is not workable at all and only maximize harm on real users.