So, someone added me to a blocklist on bluesky

One thing that probably needs to be more known about BlueSky is how much is, while not exposed by the main site interface, essentially public. In particular, due to some design decisions around the "allegedly going to be distributed" nature of bluesky, blocks are public, as is being in a blocklist.

How this works is essentially that the BlueSky API reveals who blocks who, and who's on what blocklist, in a way that third party sites such as ClearSky can allow you to look up someone's handle and find out who they block, who blocks them, and what lists they're on.

So I have the somewhat bad habit of occasionally looking up myself on ClearSky, and this morning I noticed this!

I've blacked out the name for the purposes of posting here but I'll point out that this is essentially public information - you could look up my handle and find out what lists I'm on too.

So yeah, basically someone's added me to a list because I'm mean about AI - or at least reposted someone being mean about AI. Which is true. I do think AI sucks and I'd reposted someone being mean about it. Debatable whether it's "misinformation" since the post in question was something about judging people for using ChatGPT and like, that's true, I do judge people, but it's semantics and the intent is clearly to add anti-AI people to this list.

But this is kinda confronting to me. I am not really someone who attracts much attention online, so seeing that someone had added me to a blocklist was surprising. As such I posted about it, with mild bemusement. A few of my followers notice and we have some light-hearted banter about the oddness of the "add someone to a blocklist for reposting a single post" behaviour (which I describe as "absolute loser behaviour"). Some friends go and peep at the person's profile (I didn't redact it there, but again it's something that's findable anyway) and make some amused comments about the kinds of moderation lists this person runs and their bad takes. Eventually I add a post making it very clear that I don't want anyone contacting this person, and as far as I am aware nobody I know did.

Eventually the person appears themself, replying to a few posts from my friends explaining what's with the blocklists, apparently they really only use them personally and don't advertise them, and mostly it's to mute rather than block people. They don't seem particularly put out by me bringing this attention to them so that's honestly a bit of a relief.

And then someone else who I think had separate beef with them (maybe from being put on a blocklist themself) comes into their (and my) mentions accusing them of bad politics and they respond and some other rando chimes in and I make it clear to all parties that I do not want that shit in my mentions.

So like, a lot of the discussion was "oh, AI weirdos lol" and like yeah AI weirdos lol but we KNOW that AI weirdos lol. What's unexamined is Weird Social Dynamics Of BlueSky. Part of why I'm writing this is because I think people either don't know about the public block/blocklist thing or haven't thought about the ramifications. Like sure if I block one of the top two most blocked people on the platform, they're not going to notice since it's just one of thousands, but if I block a relative nobody (or someone blocks me) it's potentially going to be noticed. Like in this case - presumably lots of people got caught up in this list who weren't otherwise attracting attention, and then they notice "hey this person put me on a list". I post about it and my friends and I have a bit of a laugh at this person, but if they hadn't added me to a list we wouldn't have noticed them at all!

That's kind of the issue. Generally you want to block to avoid someone, but blocking someone could mean that they notice you. It's kind of paradoxical. Say if I block some random far-right troll weirdo, not a notable one just a random account I find, it's entirely likely I've just made myself a target for them or their mates. But even the more benign case of "who is this person and why did they add me to this moderation list" leads to some strange interactions.

But like there is a benefit to visibility of moderation lists. Like people will make dodgy "bot/evil account" type blocklists and then add innocent parties to them, often trans women, to try and trick people into blocking them. And this is probably something that it's useful to have visibility over.

I guess I'm just sort of wanting to make people aware of how this works and to consider the social implications of it. Personally, I tend to avoid using any sort of "mass block" or "mass follow" type lists, and when I do block it's fairly sparingly, like mostly people who I've encountered directly, or high profile accounts who aren't going to notice one block of thousands. But like ultimately just be aware: if you block someone or add them to a list on bsky, they can see that.

New social media features lead to new emergent social dynamics though. It helps to be aware of this.