It’s common to receive unwanted tweets or messages on social networks. Twitter’s open and public nature makes it easy for users who may not know you or have contact with you in real life to become a nuisance. However, these individuals should not be responsible for you avoiding Twitter and the platform has a block functionality for precisely this purpose.

To prevent spam and protect yourself from abusive messages on Twitter, you might want to block the user to blame.

 

Blocking someone on Twitter: the method

Log in to your Twitter account. Use the search box in the top right-hand corner of the screen to search for the user you would like to block and then click on their name when they appear.

When this user’s Twitter page appears, you will see a blue button indicating whether or not you follow this person. To the right of this button, you will see a person icon. Click on this. On the drop-down menu, select ‘Block + their username.’

 

 

What happens when you block someone on Twitter?

 

Once you have blocked a user, they won’t be able to follow you or send you messages. If your tweets are public, they’ll still be able to see them, but they won’t come up on your ‘Followers’ list and you won’t come up on their ‘Following’ list. They’ll still be able to tweet nasty things about you, but it’s much easier to ignore them.

Users will not be sent a message or notification that they have been blocked, however, it will be fairly apparent that you have done this.

 

Is blocking people the best course of action?

Many celebrities use Twitter’s block function as the first port of call when it comes to distancing themselves from trolls.

For businesses, however, blocking users who are possibly complaining about poor service, for example, can create more harm than responding and dealing with these tweets. It is not advisable to ignore or block users who feel they have been treated unfairly. Read more about businesses dealing with complaints online here.

 

You can report users if they continue to tweet abusive messages. They won’t know you’ve reported them and don’t feel bad about it so go ahead and report the trolls!

 

 

For more information, read Twitter’s help pages where there’s also a range of FAQs.