My impression is that twitter has algorithms to try to maximize "engagement", and by "engagement", I mean conflict. I follow very few people, and the people I follow post things that are tech-related... But twitter will regularly try to show me inflammatory political tweets. These tweets are not coming from people I follow. I'm careful not to take the bait, but twitter definitely does try to bait you.
I think the other half of the equation is using the recent tweets view. Whenever I accidentally end up in the algorithm view I can tell right away because of how much irrelevant BS appears.
