Why Twitter Sometimes Rewards What Most People Disapprove of: The Case of Cross-Party Political Relations
研究发现Twitter等平台奖励政治分裂内容，因为活跃用户是偏好负面内容的少数派，而沉默的大多数虽不赞同却也会点赞，导致平台扭曲真实舆论。
Recent evidence has shown that social-media platforms like Twitter (now X) reward politically divisive content, even though most people disapprove of interparty conflict and negativity. We document this discrepancy and provide the first evidence explaining it, using tweets by U.S. Senators and American adults’ responses to them. Studies 1a and 1b examined 6,135 such tweets, finding that dismissing tweets received more Likes and Retweets than tweets that engaged constructively with opponents. In contrast, Studies 2a and 2b ( N = 856; 1,968 observations) revealed that the broader public, if anything, prefers politicians’ engaging tweets. Studies 3 ( N = 323; 4,571 observations) and 4 ( N = 261; 2,610 observations) supported two distinct explanations for this disconnect. First, users who frequently react to politicians’ tweets are an influential yet unrepresentative minority, rewarding dismissing posts because, unlike most people, they prefer them. Second, the silent majority admit that they too would reward dismissing posts more, despite disapproving of them. These findings help explain why popular online content sometimes distorts true public opinion.