Is your LinkedIn feed overwhelmed by posts from people you rarely interact with? Learn the crucial differences between unfollowing someone and removing them as a 1st-degree connection.
Last updated 14 October 2026
Unfollowing stops their articles, posts, and reshares from appearing on your LinkedIn homepage feed. Crucially, you remain 1st-degree connections.
You can still send each other direct messages without paying for InMail, view each other's complete profile details, and see mutual connections. The other person is never notified that you unfollowed them.
Removing a connection severs the 1st-degree relationship entirely. You become 2nd-degree or 3rd-degree contacts.
You lose the ability to send free direct messages unless you share a common group or have a premium InMail subscription. Furthermore, removing a connection automatically unfollows them in both directions.
Unfollow colleagues, acquaintances, or industry peers whose content does not interest you, but with whom you want to maintain an open messaging channel for future professional opportunities.
Unfollowing is ideal for curating a high-signal feed focused purely on relevant insights without burning professional bridges.
Remove connections when an individual behaves unprofessionally, spams your inbox with unsolicited sales pitches, or when you are approaching LinkedIn's 30,000 connection limit and need to prune inactive contacts.
Before removing connections in bulk, always export your network to CSV so you have an offline record of past relationships.
No. LinkedIn never informs users when someone unfollows them. Your name simply disappears from their public follower count.
Yes. Once disconnected, either party can send a new connection invitation, provided neither user has blocked the other.
Yes. LinkedIn allows you to unfollow people one by one in your Following settings, or you can use Unpend's Network Manager to bulk unfollow hundreds of profiles with one click.
Unpend is a free Chrome extension that withdraws every pending invitation in a single run, and shows you the network LinkedIn will not. 150 free actions a month, nothing leaves your browser.
Add to Chrome, freeLinkedIn has no bulk withdraw. Here is the manual method, how long it really takes, and how to clear the whole list in one pass instead.
LinkedIn has no bulk remove and no way to see your full connection list at once. Here is the manual method and how to work through a large list properly.
Unfollowing hides someone’s posts while keeping the connection. Here is where the setting lives, what the other person sees, and how to do it for a long list.
Company pages you followed years ago still fill your feed. Where LinkedIn keeps the list, why it is separate from people, and how to clear it quickly.
