Twitter Support first made mention of this feature—referred to as a “soft block”— when it initially was tested in early September. According to Twitter, the purpose of the soft block is to allow users to curate their own followers list and determine who they want to interact with. The company clarified that a removed follower won’t be notified of any changes made unless they go directly to a user’s profile to verify this. That said, this doesn’t completely stop someone from following that same user again, like blocking someone would. According to a Twitter Transparency report released this past July, hateful conduct violations had ramped up, with more than 1 million accounts found to have violated company policy. Twitter responded by acting against these accounts and adding more features to its platform. Lately, Twitter has been testing other new security features, such as Safety Mode, which automatically blocks accounts that engage in “potentially harmful language,” and “Heads Up,” which issues a warning to users that they may be entering a particularly heated conversation. Though Twitter continues to make anti-harassment a much bigger priority, the platform has yet to implement other features users have been asking for, such as an Edit button. The company instead has preferred to add adjacent features, such as the Undo Send button.
