Twitter Users Can Now Quietly Remove Followers Without Blocking Them

Among the many features it has tested and released this year, Twitter is now giving its users the ability to better control who follows their accounts without taking drastic steps or potentially drawing unwanted attention. Going forward, all users now have access to the soft block feature the company started testing last month.

Twitter is largely a public platform; while users can set their profiles to private, doing so greatly limits how many people will see their content. Leaving an account public, however, makes it possible for anyone to view the content, and the only way to prevent this is using the block tool.

That is a drastic step that could potentially invite drama or other troubles into one's life as the person who was blocked will quickly realize what happened. Twitter has rolled out a new option often called a 'soft block' that allows users to quietly remove followers instead; it is available on the web.

A follower who is removed from an account will not receive a notification about it, though they may eventually notice that they're no longer seeing tweets from the account in their news feed. This quiet removal allows that person to continue reading your tweets, but they'll either have to manually pull up your account each time or re-follow it.

Twitter first announced a test of the feature in early September, describing the soft block tool as a curation feature. The new option to remove a follower is found in the same menu where you can block or mute an account.