This isn't Twitter's garbage problem. It's the garbage problem of the people this guy follows. Seems to me that building out a complicated system for channeling different tweets would hardly be worth the resultant complexity to Twitter and their users.
Is it so much to ask to employ a little restraint in publishing, and on the other hand, a little taste in following?
I disagree. Some of the tweets I subjectively label as garbage might be legit. Hey, maybe some guy's mom is on twitter and wants to know what he had for lunch. It's not a people problem, it's a drawback of the platform that all of this different subject matter has to be broadcast in the same stream.
It's a people problem, but the problem is you. If you don't care about what he's having for lunch, then I'm not so sure what's so hard about ignoring his tweet. It's only going to be on your screen for a split second as you're scrolling through other stuff. Presumably anyone you follow would post more things that are worthwhile than not; otherwise, you should just find new people to follow.
One of my friends tweets quite a bit about Magic: The Gathering. I don't care about that. Somehow I get along just fine by not paying much attention to the posts I don't care about. I don't quite understand your dilemma.
What I intended to convey was that your mind already possesses a filter for this type of thing that you could never hope to reproduce in software. I just don't understand what's preventing you from unconsciously applying it, since plenty of other people seem to be doing perfectly fine at doing that.
I read all my twitter on my iphone, and if I could filter on the server, it could cut my daily reading from 20 minutes to 10 if this problem was solved, so to me that's a big deal.
Is it so much to ask to employ a little restraint in publishing, and on the other hand, a little taste in following?