Antisocial Media: Twitter Recommends Accounts to Unfollow

Twitter faced criticism this week after the social media network started to recommend to users accounts to unfollow.

The notification, which was visible to only certain users, informed them, “You don’t need to follow everyone to know what’s happening. Make sure you’re only following the people that make Twitter great for you.”

Users were then provided with a small list of some of the accounts they follow, along with the option to unfollow them.

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

The feature was reportedly visible to just a small number of people for a few days, however, the social platform has refused to answer whether it will become a permanent feature for everyone.

CEO Jack Dorsey will testify before Congress next week about bias against conservatives on the company’s platform. President  Donald Trump has said bias on Twitter has personally affected him. Along with suggesting accounts to unfollow, the platform has recently purged accounts that the company accused of engaging in “coordinated manipulation.”