How to Remove Followers on LinkedIn
LinkedIn keeps the connection and the follow as two separate records, and gives you no button for the second one. What you have instead is a block for one person and a switch that clears every outside follower at once.
How to remove followers on LinkedIn has a short answer that surprises people: there's no button for it. LinkedIn lets you remove a connection, and it lets you unfollow people yourself, but it doesn't give you a remove option for someone who follows you. To stop one specific person following you, you block them. Open their profile, select More, choose Report or block, then Block. They aren't notified, and the block ends both the follow and any connection between you.
If what you want is to clear out followers in bulk, LinkedIn has a setting for that: in Settings, under Visibility, you can limit who can follow you to your connections. When you do, followers who aren't your connections are removed, and your follower count becomes the same as your connection count. Nothing sits between those two options. You either block one person completely or remove every outside follower at once.
The reason there's no middle option is that LinkedIn treats connecting and following as two different relationships. A connection is mutual: both people agreed to it, and it shows up in both networks. A follow is one-way: one person subscribes to the other's posts. Connecting creates both relationships at once, so connections usually follow each other by default, but the two records are still separate. You can unfollow a connection and stay connected, which is how people quiet a colleague's posts without an awkward disconnect.
What LinkedIn doesn't give you is the reverse move for followers. You control whom you follow. You don't directly control who follows you, except through the two blunt tools: a block, which removes everything, and the connections-only switch, which removes everyone outside your network. Many people learn this after searching for a remove-follower button that isn't there.
This matters because on LinkedIn the follower count is a public credential. It sits on your profile and signals whether you're someone with an audience or someone with contacts. People working on that number, whether by posting or by looking at LinkedIn followers directly, should know the count can drop sharply if they, or a future assistant managing the account, flip the connections-only switch.
How do you remove a follower on LinkedIn?
One at a time, by blocking. On desktop, go to the person's profile, click More, select Report or block, and choose Block. On mobile, open the profile, tap the three-dot menu, and choose the same option. LinkedIn doesn't notify the person, but they'll no longer be able to see your profile or content, and any connection between you ends with the follow.
That makes blocking the right tool for people you genuinely don't want in your audience, such as someone harassing you, a scraper account, or a competitor you'd rather didn't track your posts. It's the wrong tool for general tidying, because it's heavy. A blocked person can't view your profile while the block is in place.
Does removing a connection remove them as a follower?
Don't rely on the old answer. For a long time, removing a connection left the person following you, and that was the standard workaround. LinkedIn's help page for removing a connection says only that the person isn't notified, and that any recommendations and endorsements between you are withdrawn and won't come back if you reconnect. It doesn't promise either way about the follow, and users testing it since late 2024 report that the follow goes with the connection. If you want someone gone as a follower, block them; if you want to keep them as a follower, keep the connection.
Can you remove followers from a LinkedIn company Page?
LinkedIn Pages don't offer admins a remove-follower tool either. Page followers choose to follow and can unfollow on their own. If an account following a Page is abusive, report it; for the rest, a Page's follower list isn't something admins curate one by one.
How do you remove all followers who aren't connections?
Use the follow setting. Go to Settings and Privacy, then Visibility, then the section about followers, and change who can follow you from everyone to your connections. LinkedIn states that when you limit followers to your connections, followers outside your network are removed and your follower number becomes the same as your total connections.
Think before you use it. It can't be targeted, so every off-network follower goes, including people who follow you because they like your posts. If you post regularly for an audience beyond your network, this switch wipes that audience. And switching back to everyone later doesn't restore them; people would have to find you and follow again.
It makes more sense for someone who uses LinkedIn purely as a professional address book and wants their posts seen only by people they know.
What does the Follow button setting do?
A separate setting lets you show Follow instead of Connect as the main button on your profile. It doesn't remove anyone. It changes what a visitor is invited to do first, which matters for creators who want an audience without a pile of connection requests from strangers.
How do you see who follows you on LinkedIn?
Open your profile and click your follower count, which LinkedIn shows on your profile, or go to My Network and open the section for people you follow and people following you, then choose the Followers tab. On mobile, the route runs through My Network, then Manage, then Following and followers. The list shows each follower's name and headline, and whether they're also a connection.
Other people can see how many followers you have, but the list of names is yours to browse. That's worth remembering when you audit it: you're reviewing who can see your posts, not who the public thinks follows you.
How do you know how many followers you have on LinkedIn?
The follower count appears on your profile and at the top of your followers list. It includes connections who follow you, which by default is most of them, plus people outside your network who clicked Follow. That's why it's usually higher than your connection count unless you've limited following to connections.
Should you remove inactive or fake followers on LinkedIn?
Usually not, because you can't do it gently. The only per-person tool is a block, and blocking hundreds of accounts one at a time is slow and doesn't improve anything visible. Inactive followers simply don't see your posts. They don't hurt the people who do.
The number where inactive followers matter is engagement rate calculated against followers. That version of the metric divides your interactions by your follower count, so a large, quiet audience makes it look worse. LinkedIn's own analytics divide by impressions instead, which dead followers barely touch, as what is a good engagement rate on LinkedIn explains. If a tool you rely on uses followers, keep in mind what it's measuring rather than trying to prune your way to a better figure.
For genuinely fake accounts, the kind that exist to scrape profiles or spam, block and report them. What a fake follower checker can see covers how little any outside tool can tell about who is actually active.
Is removing followers on LinkedIn like removing them on Facebook?
No. Facebook gives you a direct option to remove someone who follows your profile, without blocking them, because it runs friends and followers as two relationships and lets you edit both. How to remove followers on Facebook walks through it. LinkedIn stores the same two relationships and only gives you controls for one.
What happens to your follower count when you block or switch settings?
Blocking removes one follower and, if you were connected, one connection. The count changes by one. The connections-only switch can move the count by a lot, all at once, down to your connection number. Both are permanent in practice, since unblocking or switching back doesn't bring anyone back automatically.
If your follower count is part of how you present yourself, a recruiter's first glance or a buyer's quick check, audit before you act. Decide whether you want an audience beyond your network. If you do, leave following open, block only the accounts you really don't want, and grow the count with posts people follow you for. The followers and connections on a profile are separate numbers, and knowing which one a setting touches keeps you from losing the one you meant to keep.
LinkedIn follower removal questions people ask
Does LinkedIn tell someone when you block them?
No. LinkedIn doesn't notify the person you block. They'll simply stop being able to see your profile and content.
Can I stop a connection from following me but stay connected?
Not from your side. Whether a connection follows you is their choice; they can unfollow you and stay connected. What you can do is unfollow them so their posts stop appearing in your feed.
If I unblock someone, do they follow me again?
Not automatically. Unblocking restores the ability to interact, but the follow and any connection that ended with the block have to be recreated.
Will limiting followers to connections remove my connections?
No. It only removes followers who aren't connections. Your connections stay, and your follower count becomes equal to your connection count.
Is there a way to remove many followers at once?
Only through the connections-only follow setting, which removes every off-network follower together. LinkedIn has no selective bulk removal.
Keep reading
- LinkedIn followers — The public count on a profile, and the settings that can move it in one step.
- What is a good engagement rate on LinkedIn — Why LinkedIn divides by impressions, and outside tools divide by followers.
- How to remove followers on Facebook — The network that did give you a remove-follower button, and why.