Twitter Initiates Live Test of the New Follower Removal Option

Twitter has started the first live test of its new method for removing individual followers from your audience, which eliminates the need to block and unblock for the same. This is part of Twitter's aim of delivering more control options for its users.

Those participating in the new test will now be able to pick ‘Remove this follower' directly from each user's options list under their ‘Followers' display, as shown in this image. The user will not be alerted that they have been removed, and they will have the option to re-follow you if they so desire. However, it is a less offensive option to remove someone who you no longer want to interact with your tweets.

Twitter has been testing the feature in the previous few weeks, with app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi noticing the removal procedure last month.

In a recent summary of upcoming control tools, Twitter mentioned the option, which will likely include choices to archive old tweets, remove oneself from a tweet debate, and hide your likes.

The overall goal is to give users greater control over their in-app interactions and avoid unwanted engagement. Last week, Twitter added a new ‘Safety Mode' option that allows users to instantly restrict mass-mentions of their account, preventing tweet pile-ons and ‘Cancel Culture' effects.

The ability to swiftly and easily remove followers could lessen conflict while also preventing future problems. Of course, as long as the user isn't aware, which could lead to issues – but if it gets to that point, you'll still be able to block someone completely.

Brands may benefit from the ability to dismiss followers, since businesses will be able to run follower audits more quickly, which will help them optimize their audience analytics and maximize performance.

Your tweet analytics information is only useful if your target audience consists of real, potential buyers who might purchase from your company as a result of your campaign. Knowing that your best time to tweet is 10 a.m. on Tuesday is useless if half of your followers never listen to you in the first place, whereas knowing that more people engage with video in your tweets would be more useful if you had a better grasp of whom those people watching are.

At the same time, tweet engagement determines at least a portion of your tweet reach, so eliminating followers who could be bots, are inactive, or never engage could let you enhance your data and overall progress in the app.

The same is true for ad targeting with lookalike audiences, with the ability to eliminate inactives boosting the input data for such campaigns.

Again, you can accomplish this already by blocking/unblocking, so it doesn't contribute much in terms of functionality, and it isn't a "game changer" in this regard. However, having a less intrusive, less aggressive method of reviewing your audience could be beneficial due to the streamlined procedure.

The new 'Remove Follower' feature from Twitter is now being tested in the app's web version.