Twitter is testing its first privacy tool, the ability to delete a follower and not block them. The removal follower function is currently being tested online and appears to confirm the soft block concept as an official Twitter tool.
The tweet that announced the test stated that you can remove followers (followers) from your profile page. Click the three-dot icon next to a follower's name and click Remove follower. Your tweets will not appear in their timeline.
This is different from blocking someone. It prevents them from seeing your tweets or direct messaging you. Twitter's new Remove Follower button is more like a remote unfollow but it allows you to make some distance from someone else on Twitter.
You could previously do a soft ban to make someone unfollow you. This is when you manually block and unblock someone. To see their tweets on their timeline, followers you removed must refollow you. If you have protected tweets (which are only visible to your followers), they would need your permission to be a follower once again.
It is an admission that similar functionality could be made an official Twitter feature and that people would benefit. This is yet another example of Twitter making users' habits official features.
A better solution would be to have more control over who sees your tweets at the time of tweet conception. Twitter is looking into an Instagram-like Close Friends option. For now, however, you can easily and quietly prune your list of followers.
