Twitter Management 101: Blocking And Reporting Users As Spam

Because the Twitterverse is such a vast platform where users have equally vast tweeting liberties, browsing through threads peppered with people who post stuff that are totally uninteresting to you can be quite annoying. Worse, some users have that habit of repeating themselves and flooding their pages, which, in our point of view, is spam. While you can always skip and ignore, wouldn't it be nicer if what you saw on your page are just and ONLY the types of tweets you'd bother reading? That would certainly make for a cleaner and more refreshing data consumption experience! Thank goodness Twitter has given us the power to choose who to follow, who to unfollow, and if need be, who to block.

Blocking A User On Twitter

1. Make sure you're logged on to your Twitter account. Go to Profile Page of the user you want to block. 2. Click the Me icon (or the icon that looks like a person) on the upper right hand section of the profile. A drop-down menu will appear. 3. Select Block.

What Blocking A User Means

Completely blocking a user, not just unfollowing him or her, can mean several things. - Their @replies and @mentions?to you will no longer appear in your @mentions tab. - They can no longer add your Twitter account to their lists. - They can no longer follow you. - They can no longer see your profile picture in their timelines or profile page.

Would They Know You Blocked Them?

They won't be notified of the block, but will certainly at some point in the future notice that your posts are not appearing on their home pages. They will also not be able to follow you. Note: If you haven't subscribed to Protected Tweets, this means your posts are in public domain and will still be visible to anyone, whether or not they have a Twitter account.

What If I Change My Mind?

Of course, you can change your mind and unblock someone! All you need to do is visit the blocked users profile, click the Me icon, and select Unblock from the drop-down menu that appears. Alternatively, you can hover your mouse over the 'Blocked' button on the user's profile page and it turns into 'Unblock'.

Reporting Users As Spam

You not only can block and unfollow users, you can also report them as spam. To do this, visit the user's profile page, click the Me icon and select 'Report @username for spam' from the drop-down menu. [See the first photo above.] The moment you do this, the user will be blocked from replying, mentioning and following you. Twitter's Trust and Safety Team will then immediately review the account if it is, indeed, spam. You may not instantly see that this account has been suspended. Read more about Twitter Etiquette. Have you tried blocking other users? Why did you block them? Let us know in the comments!