Twitter is testing out a way to remove followers without blocking them

Want free Samsung credits? Here's $50 worth to get you started.

Reserve your interest in Samsung's new Galaxy lineup with your email—no purchase required. Enjoy up to $1,250 savings and a chance to win $5K in Samsung credit.

Reserve Now

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

A new feature being trialed by Twitter will let you manage your follower list with less friction. Instead of having to block someone to remove them from your follower count, you’ll have the option to remove a follower without them knowing what’s happened.

That’s an important change, as it enables users to manage their personal brand without the potential blowback from using the block button. The feature is being tested on the web version of Twitter currently.

Going to your follower list will show a three-dot-icon next to the existing Following/Follow button. Clicking on that icon will give you the option to “Remove this follower” which breaks the connection between your accounts without notifying the other user.

It’s the first in many “social privacy” features that Twitter has in the pipeline. These include a tool to let you archive your old tweets, a way to hide tweets you’ve “liked” from view by others, and a way to remove your account from public conversations.

That last one currently only works if you’re the thread starter, but Twitter wants to allow anyone mentioned in the thread to remove themselves, in case they don’t want to continue the conversation for whatever reason.

It’s all part of Twitter’s plan to increase engagement on the platform. Twitter’s own internal research found that many users don’t understand how privacy works on Twitter, like if their account is visible to others or who can see things like replies.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Twitter is rolling out Super Follows so you can pay extra for exclusive tweets
• Facebook apologizes after its shitty AI labeled a video of a Black man as “about Primates”
• People are now spending more time watching TikTok than YouTube
• Instagram will soon kick you off the app if you don’t cough up your birthday

Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.