Twitter likely uses content-editables over input elements because there are certain features which require more complicated, dynamic rendering than just plaintext (hashtags, mentions, links). They probably even have a team of frontend developers dedicated to this one thing. Rich text editing on the web is something everyone, not just Twitter, has trouble with, specifically when dealing with mobile, with IME, or copy-paste edge cases. I get your frustration, but know that this is one of hardest problems remaining in modern web dev, and it’s a feature which is expected by the majority of users, who don’t spend their days editing plain-text files. I do think it’s funny that you opened a web inspector, saw the divs and spans, and decided to get mad about that.
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Rich text editing is one of the harder problems I’ve worked on in software, which seems strange to type but... Absolutely, it’s a hard problem. I think I’ve done other things people would (I know I did) assume were much more difficult, but in recent memories that was definitely one of the biggest pains in the ass I encountered.
Come to think of it, I was basically hired to do that one thing because the existing team was struggling with it and it was blocking a launch.