Twitter starts recommending people to unfollow

'You don't need to follow everyone to know what's happening,' Twitter told users

Twitter carried out a trial recommending users to unfollow accounts they don't usually interact with (Getty Images)

After more than a decade of suggesting accounts for its users to follow, Twitter is now testing a feature that suggests which accounts someone might want to unfollow.

Some Twitter users have begun reporting a notification from the social media firm that offered the chance to "control what's happening" on their news feed.

"You don't need to follow everyone to know what's happening," one notification read. "Make sure you're only following the people that make Twitter great for you."

Another message stated: "You can improve your timeline by reviewing some accounts you may not need to follow."

Twitter confirmed to Slate that it had tested the feature in a trial among a small proportion of users.

"We know that people want a relevant Twitter timeline. One way to do this is by unfollowing people they don't engage with regularly," a spokesperson said.

"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 trial is part of Twitter's plans to boost user engagement by removing accounts that its algorithm deems irrelevant to certain people.

It follows the introduction of the "algorithmic timeline" and an "in case you missed it" feature, which brought Twitter closer in line with other social media platforms like Facebook.

Other recent measures to improve user experience include a major purge of accounts controlled by bots.

Tens of millions of suspicious and inactive accounts were removed as part of the cull, which came after the firm came under pressure to be more active in policing the platform.