Twitter Bug Is Telling Users You Unfollowed Them: How To Avoid Sending Awkward Notification

If you've unfollowed someone on Twitter in the past week, there's a good chance they know, no outside apps required. An internal bug is causing Twitter to send notifications to the person you unfollowed, just to let them know you're no longer viewing their tweets. No, this isn't an app redesign or a new feature. It's a mistake that Twitter is working to correct. The alert is confusing as well. Instead of getting a notification that the user has "unfollowed" them, it's apparently sending a push notification that says the user has "followed you back," according to Vice on Wednesday. Naturally, this alerts the user that they'd been unfollowed, as they assumed the user was already following them. This bug isn't affecting everyone, and the notifications seem to only surface between Twitter users who follow each other. Twitter claimed they're working on a fix for this faulty notification system, in a comment to Vice. While the bug is active, though, there is a way to avoid looking like a jerk to someone you know. If you're dying to unfollow someone, but feel right now may not be the best time, it could be beneficial to mute their account until further notice. This will take all of their tweets off of your feed, so you no longer need to keep up with the nonsense you're trying to avoid. It won't alert the user that you've muted them. It's important to note, if you mute the user, they'll still be able to view your content. If you don't want the user seeing your posts, you must use the "block" feature, which is much more obvious. The user won't receive a notification that you've blocked them, but they'll be told if they try to visit your personal Twitter page. This also impacts their ability to send you a direct message, while the mute feature does not interfere with direct message communication. If the idea of knowing who unfollowed you is intriguing, there are a handful of third party apps that allow access to your follower count and individual follower handles. You can download the app in order to be specifically notified when one of your followers, mutual or not, decides to stop following your page. Apps like Who Unfollowed Me will do the trick. It's unclear exactly how long this bug has been haunting Twitter, but complaints from users go back to mid-June. There is also no expected time for the bug to be fixed, so keep that in mind if you're planning to go on an unfollowing spree anytime soon.