Latest definitely is the only true way to use Twitter. Does anyone really need to see what other people you follow have liked or replied to? If they wanted me to see they would have retweeted.

One thing I've noticed is that the app periodically switches my preference from "Latest tweets" back to "Top tweets". I'm not sure if it's just a bug, but I wouldn't be surprised if that behavior was intentional.

It happens on a lot of social media where there's a sort by "top" vs "newest". It's a dark pattern and I'm convinced it's both intentional and cargo-culted. I recall having the issue with Facebook about a decade ago when they first rolled out "top" posts in favor of newest.

It is intentional and if you look on the app when you're switching between the two it even says "We'll switch you back to top tweets after a little while" or something along those lines. True jerk design.

I believe this is intentional.

The problem isn't that Blue Check marks are polarizing. The problem is that there are lots of communities on twitter - gamers, scientists, tech, conservative, bernie. The problem is that accounts with a large number of followers will necessarily have followers who come from lots of different communities. It's when these communities come into contact with each other that fights happen. That's the mechanism for the creation of drama on twitter, it's two groups that come from fundamentally different bubbles intersecting.

one way i found to make sure my timeline is always on "latest" mode is by creating a private list and adding all my follows to it.

no ads, always latest.

Or even better, use Lists.