Tuesday, July 14, 2015

vanderTrick: Remove Twitter follower(s) without blocking (”soft block”).

There may be an occasional Twitter follower that you would like to remove from following your posts, though not by severing all ties with them.  Remember that blocking means that you won’t see their tweets either.  A surprisingly simple, but unintuitive solution is available.  Follow these steps, and … follower gone.
  1. Go to your Followers and click on the unwanted follower's handle or icon.
  2. Click the settings wheel, next to [Follow], and click on [Block].  
  3. This blocks the follower, but also removes your access to that stream ("hard block").
  4. Click on the settings wheel again (now otherwise a mostly blank page) and on [Unblock], and that Twitter stream returns.
  5. Check your list of Followers and that particular follower should no longer be there.
Note that nothing stops that follower from refollowing you, though most won’t notice in a busy daily feed.  If that happens, then stop after Step 2, which fully cuts your connection with that follower (no follower and no stream).  Or, just accept that all tweets are public.

(@vdpluijm)