As with all social networks, some Twitter users suffer abuse from their followers. Blocking is one way of removing that abuse from your timeline, but it’s not a quiet way of silencing detractors. With that in mind, Twitter is experimenting with a new way to get rid of unwanted followers without them knowing about it.
The feature test is being carried out on the web version of Twitter. When viewing your followers, there’s a new option called “Remove this follower.” Clicking it brings up the message ” will be removed from your followers and won’t be notified by Twitter. They can follow you again in the future.”
Abusers can react angrily to being blocked and retaliate in a number of ways, for example, creating another Twitter account to continue the abuse, targeting the user on other platforms, or encouraging others to partake in the abuse. This new method avoids those scenarios because the follower has no idea they are no longer seeing your tweets, and even if they do realize, there’s no evidence the user removed them.
For now this is just a test, but one that’s hard to argue against adding as a core feature of Twitter. It’s also the second test to be initiated this week, with the other being edge-to-edge photos, videos, and GIFs on iOS.
