Twitter and social media are a cesspool. Any sort of curation, trending, or recommendations, tend towards what will garner the most "engagement". Playing on people's fears and outrage to keep them glued to the feed and a captive audience for advertisers. Brief messages (tweets) are a sure way to prevent nuance from getting in the way of a black-and-white opinion.

People in positions of fame, notoriety, power, like Musk, have learned that playing the troll is good for them. They can troll with impunity and the result has turned out to be positive in an "Any publicity is good publicity" way. Journalists lap it up because it gives them something to write about and give their publications clicks for the daily outrage. Everyone gets to fuel the flames.

"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us." -- Marshall McLuhan