Why does X (Twitter) keep unfollowing people for me?

No. As of October 2026, no page in X's Help Center describes X unfollowing anyone on your behalf. When a follow won't go through, X's page on following issues points to a block: an error message when you tap Follow on someone's profile means they've blocked you from following them.

Reaching X's follow limit doesn't do it either. At 5,000 accounts, X may stop you from following more until more people follow you, and its advice is to wait or unfollow a few accounts yourself: how X's follow limits work.

Twitter did once have to tell people this. From at least August 2011 to early April 2012, its help page on following problems said some following lists were wrong, and: "Don’t worry, you haven’t automatically unfollowed anyone." More on that bug below.

Their profile tells you which it was.

A block ends the follow in both directions, and X's page on blocking says unblocking brings neither back. X doesn't tell you when someone blocks you: how to know if someone blocked you.

Anyone can also remove a follower without blocking them. X doesn't notify the person removed, so to you it looks like an unfollow you never made. You can follow them again.

Suspended accounts drop out of the lists too. In our data, they make up 23% of the followers our users lose, and when X lifts a suspension the follow comes back with the account: our alert for that reads "got unsuspended and follows you again". Some suspensions are mistakes X then undoes. In March 2026, Nikita Bier, then X's head of product, wrote that a new spam filter had wrongly flagged a subset of accounts for about 12 hours, and that 99% of those suspensions were reverted the same day.

A deactivated account comes back if its owner logs in within 30 days. Why a follower count drops for each of these reasons is in why you lose followers on X.

X's page on compromised accounts lists following, unfollowing or blocking that you didn't make or approve among the signs that someone else is using your account. The same page says a third-party app can have a bug that causes unexpected behaviour, and that changing your password or revoking its access will stop it.

An app can only unfollow for you if you gave it permission to. On X's older sign-in method, that's the level called "Read and Write", which includes following and unfollowing accounts for you. On the newer one, X's help page lists "Follow and unfollow people for you" among what an app can be allowed to do. Since 20 April 2026, X no longer lets apps on its self-serve API plans follow or unfollow at all.

A browser extension or a script running in the X tab where you're signed in needs no permission screen: it acts as you. So does anyone who has your password. Is an unfollow tracker safe to connect? covers what each kind of tool can do.

1. 1

   Check a profile first

   Open one of the accounts that vanished. If it says you're following it, the list was wrong, and nothing needs fixing.

2. 2

   Revoke the apps you don't use

   In your settings, "Apps and sessions" lists every app connected to your account with its permissions. Revoke any you don't recognise, and any that can follow or unfollow for you.

3. 3

   Remove extensions you don't trust

   They don't appear in X's list. You remove them from your browser.

4. 4

   Change your password

   That's where X's steps for a compromised account start, along with securing your email address. A new password doesn't log you out of X's iOS and Android apps, so log out your other sessions as well.

5. 5

   Follow them again

   X didn't notify them when your account unfollowed them, so they may not have noticed.

Twitter's systems have changed who people follow by mistake. These are the cases Twitter or its staff confirmed.

Twitter's advice in 2012 still works when a list looks wrong: open the profile to confirm you're following the account. NBC News quoted a user at the time who had to re-follow about 10 people every day.

We watch your followers, not the accounts you follow. An account leaving your Following list gets no alert from us: we read that list only to show who doesn't follow you back. We don't follow or unfollow anyone for you.

When followers vanish all at once, we check before we alert. Each check first reads the follower count X shows on your profile. If the list we read comes back short of that count by more than 5 accounts, or 0.5% on a bigger account, we discard the check, send no alerts and try again about an hour later. If your own account shows as suspended or deactivated, we pause instead of reporting everyone as gone, and look again about a month later.

When X's count drops too, as in a spam purge, we report each follower who left, and say which ones X shows as suspended or deleted. If one comes back within 40 days, we tell you that too.