But then you only get opinions of those ppl that engage in the sort of "discussions" OP talks about.
You really aren't exposed to real ppl opinions, only the opinions of the most crazy and or manipulative.
Actually I've seen that if you're following accounts that get on average a few hundreds-low thousands of RTs/likes (vs 10s of thousands of RTs/likes), the discussions are pretty good. They're also easy to quickly scan and follow and are most likely real opinions of real people.