Twitter Launches Live Test of New Option to Remove Specific Followers

As part of its broader focus on providing more control options for users, Twitter has today launched the first live test of its new process to remove specific followers from your audience, eliminating the need to block/unblock for the same.

As you can see in this image, those in the new test will now be able to select ‘Remove this follower’ direct from each specific user’s options listing within their ‘Followers’ display. The user will not be notified that they’ve been removed, and they will be able to re-follow you again, if they choose. But it provides a less intrusive way to remove somebody who you maybe don’t want engaging with your tweets any longer.

Twitter’s been testing the option over the past few weeks, with the remove process spotted by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi last month.

Twitter also pointed to the option in its recent overview of coming control tools, which will also likely include options to archive your old tweets, remove yourself from a tweet discussion and hide your likes.

The broader focus is on providing more ways for users to manage their in-app interactions, and avoid unwanted engagement, with Twitter also adding a new ‘Safety Mode’ option last week that enables users to automatically block mass-mentions of their account, which provides a means to avoid tweet pile-ons and ‘Cancel Culture’ impacts.

Being able to quickly and easily remove followers could help to reduce confrontation, while also avoiding future issues. So long as the user doesn’t notice, of course, which could have its own complications as well – but then again, you’ll still be able to block people entirely if it goes to that next stage.

The capacity to remove followers could also be beneficial for brands, with businesses now able to more easily conduct follower audits, which could help to improve their audience analytics, and maximize performance.

Your tweet analytics data is only relevant if your audience is comprised of actual, potential customers, people who may buy from your brand as a result of your messaging. There’s no point knowing, for example, that your best time to tweet is 10am on a Tuesday if half of your followers were never listening to you anyway, while understanding that more people engage with video in your tweets would be more helpful if you had a clearer understanding of who those people viewing actually are.

At the same time, your tweet reach is at least partially defined by tweet engagement – so removing followers who may well be bots, are inactive and/or ultimately never engage could help to improve your data and subsequent performance in the app.

The same also relates to lookalike audiences for ad targeting, with the capacity to remove inactives improving the input data for such in your campaigns.

Again, you can block/unblock to do this now, so functionally, it doesn’t add a heap, it’s not a ‘game changer’ in this respect. But by having a less intrusive, less confrontational means to review your audience, it could provide benefit, through simplified process.

Twitter’s new ‘Remove follower’ option is now in testing in the web version of the app.