Political Twitter became 23 percent more toxic across the decade. And this is because, the researchers wrote, “uncivil tweets tended to receive more approval and attention [measured by] large quantities of ‘likes’ and ‘retweets.’ ” The scientists also noted that once the politicians got a rush of likes and retweets from a mean tweet, they became more likely to boost their future tweets’ meanness. This scarcity loop of constant unpredictable rewards and quick feedback ramped up their Twitter use and turned them into monsters.
