Ironically, the people who refuse to use the "Following" tab on Twitter are, I expect, the same people who are most dissatisfied with Twitter. If you use the Following tab, Twitter remains pretty damn great. It's when you allow an algorithm to feed you stuff that the experience can become something between unsatisfactory and toxic.
The "following" tab inserts algorithmic posts, and has for years now. Tossing in likes and other recommendation experiments. This means that even if you carefully only follow people you specifically want to see on your feed, if they start liking stuff that interests them but does not fit their feed, you now see it.
Some of these aspects have changed, but again, they are part of a larger recommendation experiment that twitter constantly pushes because a strict following feed = less money less engagement.
You cannot curate twitter as well as you think you can. It would be nice if that was possible though.
Ironically, the people who refuse to use the "Following" tab on Twitter are, I expect, the same people who are most dissatisfied with Twitter. If you use the Following tab, Twitter remains pretty damn great. It's when you allow an algorithm to feed you stuff that the experience can become something between unsatisfactory and toxic.