Twitter tests suggestions on people to unfollow for when your timeline is too much

You’re likely familiar with Twitter’s suggestions on who to follow. Now, the company is asking some users if they want to unfollow people. 

As first pointed out by Slate, the social media platform is testing unfollow suggestions.

“We know that people want a relevant Twitter timeline. One way to do this is by unfollowing people they don’t engage with regularly. We ran an incredibly limited test to surface accounts that people were not engaging with to check if they’d like to unfollow them,” a Twitter spokesperson told the publication.

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The feature is reminiscent of Gmail’s unsubscribe suggestions, which prompts you when the algorithm detects you haven’t engaged with a particular sender in awhile.

People who were part of the test posted screenshots on Twitter, although the suggestions weren’t entirely welcome.

Twitter’s prompt tells users they “don’t need to follow everyone to know what’s happening.”

At the moment, Twitter’s explanation to users on why they should unfollow certain accounts seems pretty vague. 

Gmail’s unsubscribe prompts at least make it clear that you haven’t been engaging much with its suggestions, leaving no room for perceived bias in its selections — an argument which Twitter would perhaps like to avoid right now.