Back in May, Facebook-owned social network Instagram rolled out a ‘Mute’ button that allows users to get rid of the posts of their annoying friends and relatives without having to take the extreme action of unfollowing them. Now, Instagram is testing a new feature that would allow users with public account to get rid of their annoying followers.
According to a report by TheVerge, Instagram has started testing a feature that will allow people with public account to remove their followers. This feature is already available to many Instagram users on Android with public accounts. Instagram too has confirmed that it’s currently testing this feature, but, the company didn’t divulge much details pertaining to its release.
Generally, people always want their public accounts to have as many followers as possible, so you might be wondering why the heck in the world would someone want to remove their follower(s) and lower that follower count? Well, there can be times when you don’t want certain people to follow you because of the comments they leave on your posts. Besides, there can also be times when you don’t want certain people to start following you on Instagram even when you don’t want them to. It could be anyone – your Ex, your annoying colleague, or heck, even your employer. If your account is private, you have total control over who follows you and who doesn’t. But, if your account is public, there’s very little you can do to prevent someone from following you.
However, with this new feature, Instagram users with public account might soon be able to remove their followers. Instagram users with private account already have this feature. If your Instagram account is private, all you have to do is head over to your profile, tap on the ‘Followers’ section, tap on the three-dot button right next to the person you want to remove from your followers, and then tap on ‘Remove’. The person who’s removed from your ‘Followers’ list doesn’t even know this until and unless he manually checks his ‘Following’ list.
That said, even if you remove your follower from your public account, he still can check out all your posts and comment on them, but, he will be able to do that only when he visits your profile, as your posts will no longer appear in his Feed.
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We don’t know when exactly will Instagram roll out this feature for all public accounts, but, what we do know is there’s a workaround if you want to remove followers from your public account. It’s simple. All you have to do is switch your Instagram account from public to private. Doing so will show the option to remove followers. Once you remove your follower, you can switch back to public account again. However, those with business profiles are less likely to prefer this method as switching to private account will result in loss of their analytics.
Is your Instagram account public? What are your thoughts on this feature? Let us know in the comments down below.
