How to Remove a Follower on Instagram.

The short answer

To remove a follower on Instagram, open your profile, tap Followers, tap Remove next to the account and confirm. They are not notified. Instagram documents removal for private accounts, so a public brand profile that wants someone gone should block them, and restrict anyone it wants to quieten without a visible break.

Why brands end up asking how to remove a follower on Instagram

Most brand accounts never look at their follower list until something goes wrong. A wave of bot accounts, a hostile regular in the comments, an old burner account nobody can explain.

Then the question lands on whoever is holding the phone that day, and they make the call on instinct.

Instagram gives you three tools here: remove, block and restrict. They do different things, and only one of them is built for a public business profile. Operations rules, written down in advance, should decide which one gets used, not the mood of the person on shift.

How to remove a follower, step by step

Instagram’s help centre sets out three steps:

1. Tap your profile picture in the bottom right to open your profile.
2. Tap Followers at the top.
3. Tap Remove to the right of the follower, then tap Remove again to confirm.

That is the whole job. There is no reason field and no warning to the other person.

Do they get told?

No. Instagram’s help centre says: “When you remove a follower, they aren’t notified that you’ve removed them.”

The same is true of blocking. In Instagram’s words: “People aren’t notified when you block them.”

So neither action creates a public moment. That matters for a brand, because the last thing you want is a screenshot of a notification turning a quiet clean-up into a post.

The catch for public brand profiles

Here is the part most quick answers skip. Instagram’s help centre frames removal around privacy: “If your account is set to private, you can remove people from your followers list on Instagram.”

A brand profile is normally public, because a private brand account hides the work from the people it exists to reach. So for most brands, remove is the wrong tool to plan around.

The help centre points to the alternative in the same breath: “You can also block someone to get them to stop following you.”

When to block instead

Block is the tool for a public profile that needs someone gone. It stops them following you, and they are not told.

It can also go further than removal. In April 2021, Instagram announced the option to block an account and “preemptively block new accounts that person may create.” For a brand dealing with one persistent person running several handles, that second option is the useful one.

Block is the right call when:

• the account is harassing your team or your community
• the same person keeps returning under new names
• the account is plainly fake and is spamming your comments or messages

When to restrict instead

Restrict is the quieter tool, and for a brand it is often the better one. Instagram launched it in October 2019 to let people “quietly protect your account while still keeping an eye on a bully.”

What it does, according to Instagram:

• Comments from a restricted account on your posts are only visible to that person, and you can approve, delete or ignore them.
• Their direct messages move to message requests, and you get no notifications from them.
• They cannot see when you have read their messages or when you are active on Instagram.
• Since an update in May 2024, a restricted account also cannot tag or mention you in their posts, or remix your Reels.

Instagram’s announcement listed three ways in: swipe left on one of their comments, use the privacy settings, or go to the profile of the account you want to restrict.

Restrict suits the follower who is unpleasant but not dangerous. Their comment stops being visible to everyone else, nothing dramatic happens, and the community does not see a fight.

Remove, block or restrict: which one to use

A simple rule set for a brand account:

• Remove: for a private account tidying its list, where the follower has done nothing wrong but should not be there.
• Block: for a public profile that needs someone gone, or anyone harassing staff or the community, with new accounts blocked too when they keep coming back.
• Restrict: for the persistent critic or troll whose comments you want contained without a visible break.
• Do nothing: for a critic who is simply critical. Disagreement is not abuse, and blocking a fair complaint tends to read worse than the complaint did.

What to do about bot followers

Clearing a bot wave one account at a time is slow, dull work. Before anyone starts, decide whether it matters.

The honest reason to clean bots out is your own reporting. A follower count padded with accounts that never watch or reply makes every rate you calculate against it less true. If your team reports on followers, the list should be real.

If the bots are also spamming comments or messages, treat them as abuse and block them. If they are just sitting there, a periodic clean-up on a set day beats an anxious purge every time someone notices.

Write the rule down before you need it

The real problem is not the tap. It is that nobody agreed in advance who can make the call, so it gets made inconsistently or not at all.

Three things to settle:

1. Who on the team can remove, block or restrict, and whether a second person signs off on blocks.
2. What gets logged: the handle, the action, the date and one line on why.
3. What gets escalated, such as threats, impersonation or anything that could become a legal or press issue.

This is the same discipline that matters when an account runs into trouble with the platform itself, which we cover in how Instagram appeals and strikes work. If community management is falling between people on your team, our social media management work starts with exactly this kind of rule set.

What good looks like

A brand that handles this well has a one-page note that anyone on shift can follow. It names the three tools, says which one applies to which situation, and says who decides.

Every block is logged. Restrict is the default for a heated but harmless account. Remove barely features, because the profile is public.

Nobody argues in the comments, and nobody wakes up to find a regular customer blocked because a junior was having a bad day.

How NBK thinks about follower hygiene

We treat the follower list as part of the system, not a vanity number. Who gets removed, blocked or restricted is a moderation decision, and moderation decisions need an owner, a rule and a record.

The same goes for who can approve a post, reply to a complaint or speak for the brand. Our approval process template is a good place to start writing those owners down.

Next step

If your community management runs on instinct and whoever has the login, NBK can help find the gap in the system and close it.