This is a natural consequence of Twitter's design, which rewards attention and users with high follower counts. "Omg I too love sandwiches" is not going to get a lot of likes, whereas outrage sells. There's no way to downvote toxic behavior, so the only direction is up.
> which rewards attention
Hence my thought that this is a quirk of human nature. We give attention to the wrong things.
All ad-based media suffers from this problem. Twitter’s algorithm is but a reflection of our revealed preferences. It doesn’t care what we say we want, only what we show we want with our actions.
You don't even need ads for it to happen. Take the ads out of Twitter. Drive the algorithm entirely off of what has the most likes and retweets. You're still going to get incredibly toxic behavior, because that's what people are more likely to react to and retweet.
The problem is that with Twitter, everything lives in one huge pool. You can't make a "nice Twitter" section cordoned off from everything else.
The real problem is that either due to algorithms or some inherent quirk of human nature, global public social media has become awful. Let me characterize the awfulness with a joke that showcases the vibe shift.
You tweet/post: “I love sandwiches”
2009 twitter: “Omg I too love sandwiches! Let’s be friends, follow me back”
2023 twitter: “How dare you speak against my brethren who cannot eat gluten!?!? You are an awful human being and I hope you rot in hell.”