The platforms, they concluded, were reshaping not just online behavior but underlying social impulses, and not just individually but collectively, potentially altering the nature of ‘civic engagement and activism, political polarization, propaganda, and misinformation.’ They called it the MAD model, for the three forces rewiring people’s minds. Motivation: the instincts and habits hijacked by the mechanics of social media platforms. Attention: users’ focus manipulated to distort their perceptions of social cues and mores. Design: platforms that had been constructed in ways that train and incentivize certain behaviors.