How to Find Which Moderation Lists are Blocking Your Account on Bluesky

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On Bluesky, it's possible to subscribe to block lists called "moderation lists" created by other users to quickly block bots, spammers, and other kinds of accounts without having to go through all the effort yourself. That's great when you're doing the blocking, but not that great if a block list creator thinks you look like a bot and decides to add you to their block list subscribe to by thousands.

Fortunately, there is a way to see which block lists include your account on Bluesky, and who created those block lists, so you can ask them to remove you from the block list. Note that you may not be able to do that from the blocked account since they probably subscribe to their own block list, so you would be blocked by the creator as well, which means you'll need to ask a friend to ask in your behalf or simply use your personal account if your business account was blocked.

To see who blocked you, follow the following steps:

1: visit [https://clearsky.app/].

2: search for your handle or DID in the "Find an account" search box. If you use your domain name as handle, this will be your domain name, e.g. virtualcuriosities.com, otherwise it you will be your-user-name.bsky.app.

3: click on the "Lists Blocked By" tab to see which lists you are on, and how many users are blocking you through these lists.

Observation: there is a separate tab confusingly labelled "Lists Blocking" that lists which moderation lists YOU have subscribed to. Yes, this is public information on Bluesky. Pretty much everything except for which users you have muted is public information.

A page displaying information about "Virtual Curiosities" (@virtualcuriosities.com). It has several tabs: Blocking, Blocked By, Lists Blocking, Lists Blcoked By (active). Blocked by 5 users via lists. A list of 3 items. Each item has a date, a censored name, and link to "view subscribers." 17 days ago: #Ai non-art posts; Posts in the #Ai tag that are not art/gen related, rarely posts gens, and are instead spamming of " news " or " ai is deadly " etc etc. I know others must be as tired of seeing this as i. If you're interested, you can use this list! accounts added: 834. 26 days ago: Google; These users use Bluesky Android or Google Chrome (or a derivative). Likely to be a real person. 3/13/2025: Tiny Safe - Safety package; People List: - Random Blockers - General spam/troll/scam - Crypto Scam - Anti crypto Group - Anti AI Group I don't care about big tech, so sometimes I'll give some exceptions.
A screenshot of clearsky.app showing which moderation lists include @VirtualCuriosities.com.

I'd like to add that being in a block list, or being blocked in general, is nothing to worry about (most of the time). People should have control over what they are exposed to by their feeds. If you post a certain type of content and you end up in a moderation list of accounts that post that type of content, and people who don't want to see that type of content subscribe to it, this is the system working as intended. This is a good thing. People who don't want to see your posts aren't going to see your posts.

It's true that sometimes it may feel unfair to get labelled as a certain type of poster because you posted one thing one time that someone didn't want to see, but I can't really blame people for doing that. If you see an account that posts a certain type of thing once that you don't want to see, you can conclude they will also post it in the future, and you won't want to see it in the future either. Why not just block them, then? You may miss some interesting posts sometimes, but on average you're getting rid of the most unwanted content that shows up on your feed.

There is millions of users. I think you can block 80% of Bluesky and still have plenty of content left.

Written by Noel Santos.

About the Author

I'm a self-taught Brazilian programmer graduated in IT from a FATEC. In a world of increasingly complex and essential computers, I decided to use my technical expertise in hardware, desktop applications, and web technologies to create an informative resource to make PC's easier to understand.

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