I don’t care what Justin Bieber* eats for breakfast.
If I did, I would follow him on Twitter. But I don’t care, so I don’t follow him. (FYI, he’s not on the list of people every author should follow.)
Yet, every once in awhile, tweets from the Beibs himself make their way into my Twitter stream.
How does this happen?
This is going to get tricky but stay with me. It’s because someone that I follow on Twitter follows Justin. When Justin tweets and they retweet the tweet, it ends up in my twitter stream. So even though I don’t follow Justin, I get to read his updates.
It’s super annoying and it’s probably happened to you.
Will you just stop with the constant retweets?
There’s no polite way to tell your Twitter friend to quit with the constant retweeting. After all, it’s their account and you made the choice to follow them. You both have freedom of choice. (You also have the freedom to schedule your tweets).
If it really makes your blood boil, you can always unfollow the user. Pretty simple.
But if your are a personal friend with them or the rest of the content they are putting out is excellent, it gets more complicated.
The nice thing is that there’s a solution. Block their RT’s.
How to turn off retweets
Go to the profile of the person whose retweets you want to turn off. For the sake of illustration, I’m using Author Media.
Click on the icon next to the “following” button. It looks like a silhouette of a person’s head and shoulders. A drop down menu will appear. Now click on “turn off retweets.”
Congratulations! You have successfully turned off retweets from that user.
Choose carefully whose retweets you turn off. Retweets can be a fantastic way to meet new people and learn news before it breaks on traditional media.
If this article has been helpful, please share it with your friends:
Learn how to turn off annoying RTs. I just did thanks to @AuthorMedia – Click to Tweet.
Have you ever blocked someone’s retweets? What factors weigh into that decision?
* Justin Bieber was just used as an illustration. This is a fictional example. You can insert anyone else in there and you’ll get the same idea.
Or just unfollow people who retweet boring content.
Must have missed the part where she said “the rest of the content they are putting out is excellent.”
Seeing the same stuff retweeted by the same people over and over again, every day is incredibly tiresome. If after turning off the retweets the account is still pumping out the same stuff without the retweets then it’s definitely unfollow time.
Thanks Caitlin! That was super helpful and very pertinent for the moment. 🙂
God bless you for this. I have a friend who tweets funny things, but RTs CONSTANTLY to gain favor and build a network of people who RT her, too. She RTs 5-10 things from the same person in a row, and they’re never funny. But I didn’t want to unfollow my friend. This is such a great thing. I had been blocking everyone she RT’d and refreshing the page, but it was so annoying.
Unfortunately, when you click on “Turn off Retweets,” it doesn’t stay! Go out and come back in and they are all on again! Grrrrrr
Hello,
Thanks for this post. The thing is that I cannot turn off retweets from Seth Godin profile, when I try, they are turned on again few seconds later…I try to block him etc but nothing’s working…Any ideas to share?
Many thanks!
Paul.
Thank you! Is there a similar tool on FB?
Oleg, something similar on Facebook is blocking people from your newsfeed. On your newsfeed when you hover on the top far right side of a post, a button appears. When you click on it a drop down menu appears with two options on it. Click on the “I don’t like this post”. Then the post will be replaced by a list of options, one will be “turn off updates from —-“, click it and then you will see nothing more from that person in your newsfeed.