San Francisco, Sep 8 (IANS): Micro-blogging site Twitter has begun testing the first of its proposed suite of new privacy tools -- the ability to remove a follower without blocking them.

The remove follower feature is currently being tested on the web and seems to canonise the "soft block" concept as an official Twitter tool, reports The Verge.

According to the tweet announcing the test, users can remove followers from the follower list on their profile page.

They can just click the three-dot menu next to a follower's name, click aceRemove follower" and their tweets will no longer automatically show up in their timeline.

This is different than blocking someone, which keeps them from viewing your tweets and direct messaging you (and keeps you from doing the same with them), the report said.

Twitter's new remove follower feature is more of a remote unfollow button, a gentler way to create some distance between you and someone else on Twitter.

Previously, to have someone unfollow you without their knowledge, you could do a "soft block," which is when you manually blocked and unblocked someone.

Followers you remove then have to refollow you to see your tweets on their timeline and if you have protected tweets (aka private tweets, only viewable by your followers), they would need your approval to become a follower again.