I am becoming more convinced that Twitter is a net negative for humanity and for liberal democracy.
If you tried to come up with something g to tear apart a society, it would be hard to do worse than Twitter.
Any user that is seeking to promote one point of view can endlessly churn out tweets from their perspective. If anybody challenges them in any way, asks them to provide backing or evidence of some type, or provides any details disproving their claims all the user has to do is block that user and continue posting. The blocked user no longer has access to even view those tweets and anything challenging the preferred narrative is not even allowed into the conversation.
There is no limit to blocking people. You don't need justification to block somebody. I understand it's necessary to be able to block harassment but the way it's implemented goes well beyond that goal.
You're right, and it really doesn't help that plenty of media outlets either rewrite Twitter activity into a story, or quote tweets in their articles. This has a huge amplifying affect on the power of Twitter. It feels like it's representative, though it's far from it.
Twitter just optimized a process that use to be calling around to friends to get the desired "vox populi" quote.