Bluesky Block Lists: How to Find, Subscribe and Make One (I Tracked 405 Subscriptions)
A Bluesky block list is a moderation list you subscribe to with one tap. Every account on it is blocked for you, including accounts the list's owner adds later. To use one, open the list, tap Subscribe and choose Block accounts. You can't search for lists in Bluesky, so you find them through people's profiles and posts. Subscribing as a block is public. Subscribing as a mute is private.
The how-to part is short. What I wanted to know was what people actually block. Block-list subscriptions are public, so anyone can read them, and I read every new one across Bluesky for 24 hours (October 13–14, 2026): 405 subscriptions, by 198 accounts, to 214 different lists. Politics led at about a quarter, then personal lists and spam at about a fifth each. And about 1 subscription in 50 went to lists of accounts that follow too many people.
(Disclosure: I make Agent Sky, a Bluesky growth tool. More on it at the end.)
What Is a Bluesky Block List?
A block list is a moderation list that you've subscribed to as a block. Bluesky has two kinds of list. A curation list (a "user list") is a feed of accounts you want to read. A moderation list is a set of accounts to filter out, and you choose what happens when you subscribe: mute them or block them. People call the second one a "block list".
The two choices behave differently:
| Subscribe as Mute accounts | Subscribe as Block accounts | |
|---|---|---|
| What you stop seeing | Their posts and notifications | Their posts and notifications |
| Can they still see your posts? | Yes | No, not while logged in |
| Can they still reply to you or mention you? | Yes | No |
| Can others see that you subscribed? | No ("Muting is private") | Yes ("Blocking is public") |
| Accounts added to the list later | Muted automatically | Blocked automatically |
The quotes are the wording in Bluesky's own app (I read its source code as of October 14, 2026). For how a single block compares with a single mute, see mute vs block on Bluesky.
How Do You Subscribe to a Block List on Bluesky?
- Open the list's page. Tap a link to it, or open the owner's profile and go to the Lists tab.
- Tap Subscribe. You get two choices: Mute accounts or Block accounts.
- Choose Block accounts. Bluesky asks "Block these accounts?" and warns that blocking is public.
- Tap Block list. Done. Lists you've subscribed to show up under Settings → Moderation and content filters → Moderation lists.
To undo it, open the list, tap the three-dot menu and choose Unblock list. The blocks only exist because of your subscription, so unsubscribing lifts all of them at once.
How Do You Find Bluesky Block Lists?
Not through search. Bluesky's search has tabs for Top, Latest, People, Feeds and Starter Packs, and none for lists. That leaves three ways in:
- Profiles of people who publish lists. Open someone's profile and check the Lists tab. Some accounts exist only to publish lists, such as moderation-lists.bsky.social.
- Posts that link to a list. Search posts for "blocklist", "block list" or "moderation list" plus the topic you want gone. List owners often post the link when they start or update one.
- Labelers that copy their labels into lists. Some labelers (independent moderation services) also publish a list for each label. Skywatch Blue (skywatch.blue) does this, so you can block everything it labels "Spam" in one subscription.
Whichever way you find one, open it and read the description and some of the members before you subscribe.
What Are the Most Popular Bluesky Block Lists?
In my 24 hours, the most-subscribed topic lists were for spam bots, AI and crypto accounts, and adult content. Nobody publishes subscriber counts for lists, but block subscriptions are public, so I counted the new ones. This leaves out lists with fewer than 10 members, lists of one named person's followers, and lists about that week's fan-art trend.
Most-subscribed block lists, 16:02 UTC October 13 to 16:02 UTC October 14, 2026:
| List | Published by | Members | New block subscriptions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🚫💞 WaifuJulie Bots (hacked accounts that mass-follow people) | p1timmy.weee.ee | 6,961 | 12 |
| The Great AI - NFT - CRYPTO Cull | rayday.bsky.social | 25,228 | 6 |
| mute-spammer (Japanese spam and scams) | hi0a.com | 4,510 | 6 |
| Spam | skywatch.blue | 8,471 | 4 |
| ANTI NFT/AI/CRYPTO SHILL LIST | moderation-lists.bsky.social | 7,840 | 4 |
| mute-adult (Japanese adult content) | hi0a.com | 7,888 | 4 |
| Nazi Symbolism | skywatch.blue | 586 | 4 |
| TERFs & Gender Critical Accounts | skywatch.blue | 440 | 4 |
Treat this as "what people picked that day", not a recommendation. The counts are small, and a list can only show up here if someone subscribed to it as a block during those 24 hours. Mute subscriptions don't show up at all.
What Do People Actually Block With Block Lists?
Of 405 public block-list subscriptions on October 13–14, 2026, 27% were to lists about politics, 23% to personal or community lists, 21% to spam and bot lists, and 13% to lists about sexual content. I grouped each list by what its name and description say it's for.
What 405 block-list subscriptions were for (October 13–14, 2026):
| What the list targets | Subscriptions | Share | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Political and identity-based (lists described as targeting MAGA, far-right, anti-trans or other political accounts) | 111 | 27.4% | 63 |
| Personal or community lists (no stated topic, or "people I block") | 94 | 23.2% | 33 |
| Spam, bots, scams and follow-farming (mass-following to get follow-backs) | 85 | 21.0% | 50 |
| Sexual content | 52 | 12.8% | 37 |
| AI art, NFTs and crypto | 39 | 9.6% | 22 |
| Artists in one Harry Potter fan-art trend that week | 24 | 5.9% | 9 |
How big the lists were:
| Members on the list | Share of subscriptions |
|---|---|
| Fewer than 10 | 20.5% |
| 10–99 | 14.3% |
| 100–999 | 28.1% |
| 1,000–9,999 | 28.9% |
| 10,000 or more | 8.1% |
What stood out:
- Most block lists are niche. 148 of the 214 lists got exactly one new subscriber that day. The 10 most popular lists together took only 27% of subscriptions. There is no "main" block list everyone uses.
- The most-subscribed list that day had 8 people on it. It was one person's list, with no stated reason. With two other small lists by the same person, it took 53 subscriptions from 35 accounts over about 14 hours. One group of people can push a tiny list to the top in a day.
- The typical list is a few hundred accounts. The median subscription was to a list of 467 members, but the biggest had 282,855.
- Accounts that follow too many people get listed too. 8 subscriptions (2%) went to five lists about follow behavior, including "Over10K" ("Accounts that follow more than 10k accounts", 30,753 members), "Mass-followers" ("Accounts that follow a LOT of accounts in hope of getting follow-backs") and Skywatch's "Follow Farming" (6,684 members).
- People also leave. In the same 24 hours, 84 accounts removed 128 block-list subscriptions.
Making lists is common too. That day, Bluesky users created 108 new moderation lists, plus 296 new curation lists.
How Do You Make a Block List on Bluesky?
- Go to Settings → Moderation and content filters → Moderation lists and tap New. Bluesky asks you to verify your email first if you haven't.
- Add a name, a description and (optionally) an avatar, then save.
- Add people from the list's page (Add people), or from anyone's profile: three-dot menu → Add to lists.
- Subscribe to your own list as a block if you want it to block those accounts for you too. Making a list doesn't block anyone by itself, not even for you. 13 of the 405 subscriptions I counted were people subscribing to their own list.
Every Bluesky list is public, including its name, description and members, so write a description you'd be happy for the people on it to read. Bluesky also hides lists whose name or description may break its community guidelines. More on that in are Bluesky lists public?
Should You Subscribe to Someone Else's Block List?
For spam and bot lists, it's low-risk and saves a lot of work. For lists about people's views or behavior, read the list first. When you subscribe, you're trusting the list's owner with your blocks. Anyone they add later is blocked for you too, without asking.
Some list owners say so themselves. The description of one Japanese AI-art list I tracked opens with a warning (my translation): harassment by misusing moderation lists is widespread, so "I don't recommend subscribing to other people's moderation lists." Several of the big shared lists start with a "read this before use" note that sets out their rules.
A quick check before subscribing:
- Who runs it? A labeler or long-running list account with posted rules is a different thing from a list made yesterday.
- Does the description say how people get added, and is there a way to appeal?
- Scroll the members. If you know some of them and they don't fit, skip it.
- Mute if you're unsure. Muting is private and hides their posts just the same (though muted accounts can still reply to you), and you can switch to blocking later.
Bluesky won't tell you if you're on someone's block list, but ClearSky, a free third-party lookup site, can. See what lists you're on for how, and who blocked me on Bluesky for blocks by individual people.
How I measured it, and the limits. I replayed 24 hours of Jetstream, Bluesky's public stream of network events, from 16:02 UTC on October 13 to 16:02 UTC on October 14, 2026. I kept every new list and every new or removed block-list subscription (the public record Bluesky saves when you subscribe as a block). Then I looked up each subscribed list through Bluesky's public API for its name, description and member count, as of October 14. Mute subscriptions are private, so none of them are in here. These numbers are only about blocking, and people who mute lists may choose different ones. The topic groups are my reading of each list's name and description, and some lists could fit two groups (one list of "follow farmers" is also political, for example). This is one day: a single fan-art trend made the top 10 that week, and a different week would have different lists at the top. All of it is public data, read while logged out.
Those follow-behavior lists are small (8 subscriptions that day), but they're worth knowing about if you're growing an account: if you follow thousands of people hoping for follow-backs, you can end up on one. I built Agent Sky to grow an account without following like that. It finds active accounts in your niche, follows them at a human pace, well inside Bluesky's limits, and checks for a live follow-back before it unfollows anyone, so your following count stays reasonable. $9 a month, free to start. If your following count has already got out of hand, start with how to unfollow people who don't follow back.
Quick FAQ
How do I use a block list on Bluesky? Open the list's page, tap Subscribe, choose Block accounts, then confirm with Block list. Every account on the list is blocked from then on, including accounts the list's owner adds later. To stop, open the list's three-dot menu and choose Unblock list.
How do I find block lists on Bluesky? Not through Bluesky's search, which has tabs for Top, Latest, People, Feeds and Starter Packs but none for lists. Open the Lists tab on the profile of someone who publishes them, follow a link someone has posted, or search posts for words like "blocklist" or "moderation list" plus a topic.
How do I make a block list on Bluesky? Go to Settings, then Moderation and content filters, then Moderation lists, and tap New. Give it a name and description, save, and add people from the list page or from anyone's profile menu with Add to lists. Bluesky asks you to verify your email before you can create a list. To block everyone on it yourself, subscribe to your own list.
Are Bluesky block lists public? Yes. Anyone can read a block list's name, description and members, and subscribing to one as a block is public too. Bluesky's app warns you: "Blocking is public." Subscribing to the same list as a mute is private.