How to Mute Words and Phrases in Bluesky Feed
If you were looking for a break from X , but Threads didn’t suit you , you may have found yourself in Bluesky . Sure, Mastodon is good in theory, but it doesn’t have many users talking in one place. And as a single app, Bluesky is easy to use.
Bluesky also feels like an app that has learned (or is still learning) from the mistakes of its peers. It has excellent built-in moderation and anti-troll features and is relatively easy to get started with . But if you’re about to start a new social network, you’ll want to take your silent words with you—that is, the collection of terms you’ve created over the years that you simply don’t need. to see the display in your feed. Maybe it’s political topics, or news about a certain celebrity, or even about artificial intelligence.
Bluesky makes it easy to mute words, and there’s even a feature called Moderation Lists that lets you use crowdsourced lists and mass-mute accounts at the same time. Here’s how to use both.
How to mute words and phrases in Bluesky
Open the Bluesky website or smartphone app. From the sidebar, go to Settings > Moderation > Muted Words and Tags .
Here you will see many options to mute a word. First, write the phrase or word you want to mute in the text field. Then review your options, although I think the default options are the best choice. However, in the Duration section, you can mute a word for only 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days, which can be useful for, say, temporarily blocking spoilers for a TV show you haven’t watched yet.
You can then choose whether you want to disable Bluesky messages only and also disable tags. The default “Text and Tags” instead of blocking just tags works quite well here too.
Finally, you can remove people you follow from your muted list, in case you still want to hear about a topic like AI, but only from people you follow. When everything is ready, click the “Add” button. Repeat the process to add more silent words and phrases.
Your muted words will appear in the section below. To unmute a word, all you have to do is click the little X next to the word and confirm in the pop-up window.
How to disable accounts en masse
Like other social media services, Bluesky allows you to mute or block individual accounts directly from that person’s profile. Click on the three-dot menu, select “Deactivate account” and you’re done.
But the service goes beyond this: it also allows users to create moderation lists, which can be freely shared via a link, and can also mute or block all accounts included in such a list with one click. This is a convenient way to block, for example, a group of known NFT scammers or notorious trolls.
To create your own moderation list, go to Settings > Moderation > Moderation Lists > Create . Then give the list a name and description and click Save .
Use the search bar at the top to find and add as many profiles as you want to the list. Then click the “Follow” button at the top (confusing, I know) and select “Deactivate Account” in the pop-up window.
Then click “Mute List” in the pop-up window to confirm.
This process gets a lot more interesting when you start looking for crowdsourced lists of different profiles. For example, Skywatch Blue has created many lists to block specific scammers or trolls. There’s even a list dedicated to people who have Elon Musk’s name or mention in their profile or description , which some people might find particularly useful in 2025.