Here's how to block news and politics on Bsky w/ some powerful keywords and a little-known feature

Hi,

I'm the curator of Rose's Politics and News mutes, respectively, as their names may suggest lol.

I curate these lists because I believe politics is important, but so is taking a break. You can't meaningfully engage in politics or news if it's eating you alive. That's why I curate these lists.

But moderation lists, which target select accounts, can only do so much—that's where Bluesky's hashtag and keyword filter come in. It's a powerful but underutilized feature that allows you to block posts from potentially any account if their post uses a keyword or hashtag you have blocked. You may choose to exempt users you follow from a blocked word

Here's How To Access It

Click the three little bars in the upper left hand corner of your screen. Once you do, a sidebar will pop up. Select the “settings” option at the very bottom. Once you're in settings, select “moderation” and then “muted words and tags.”

Once you've reached the screen, you'll be prompted to enter a word or tag to block. You can modify how long it will be blocked, with options from “forever” to “7 days.” You may choose to mute a word only as a hashtag, or as both a hashtag and a keyword. From there, you select whether or not you want to exclude users you follow from this blocked word, then press the blue “add+” button.

Your blocked words will appear under a section labeled “Your Muted Words.”

Some Useful Keywords

Now that you hopefully know how to block words on Bluesky, let's give you some!

If you want to keep politics out of your feed, I recommend these:

MAGA

America First

Democrats

Democrat

Dem

Dems

Socialist

Socialists

Socialism

Socdems

Socdem

Social Democrat

Social Democrats

Progressive

Progressives

Democratic Socialists

Democratic Socialist

Communist

Communists

Republican

Republicans

Reps

Republican party

Democratic party

Democrat party

GOP

DNC

No kings

Ice out

Melt ice

Bluemaga

freeluigi

Trump

Donald Trump

Donald j Trump

DJT

RFKJr.

Robert F Kennedy Jr.

POTUS

The White House

SCOTUS

Supreme Court

Venezuela war

Venezuela invasion

Iran war

Iran invasion

Israel Hamas war

Hamas

Iraq war

Iraq invasion

Oil

Genocide

If you want to keep news out of your feed, I recommend these:

News

Breaking news

Breaking

Crypto

Crypto news

AI news

Artificial intelligence news

Gen AI news

Generative artificial intelligence news

If you have climate anxiety (like a lot of us do), I recommend these:

Climate change

Global warming

Fossil fuels

Pollution

Ice caps

Climate crisis

Extinction

Mass extinction

Zero hour

Just stop oil

Oil

Climate news

Environmental news

Climate change news

Global warming news

gulf stream

great salt lake

great salt lake crisis

great salt lake drying up

When News Breaks

If you're aiming to keep politics and/or news out of your feed, there are some especially broad keywords that can be very effective but have unintended consequences. For instance, blocking an entire country's name. It will most certainly be effective, you'll miss out on non-news and non-political posts about that country.

As a result, this is not the route I personally take. However, it might be the one that works for you!

Here are some of those broad keywords:

USA

United States

America

Israel

Ukraine

Iran

Iraq

Russia

Palestine

Venezuela

Greenland

Please note: I don't recommend blocking “US” as a keyword, as I doubt the filters will be able to distinguish the initialism from the word “us.” Blocking it as a tag might work, though.

Now, another technique I highly recommend is when a particularly impactful or upsetting event occurs, temporarily block keywords relating to it. Because most chatter about that topic will be about the news.

For instance, there's a lot of news going around right now about Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Ca.), a candidate for the Democratic nomination for California Governor who has since dropped out after multiple sexual misconduct allegations. This would be a perfect use case for blocking the keywords:

Eric Swalwell

Swalwell

Just Please Note

I don't curate these lists or keywords because I believe we should stay unpolitical or be uninvolved in the political process. Or because I believe we should remain willfully ignorant in our world, not at all. It's important to engage, but social media isn't the most productive and healthy way to engage with news and politics.

If you want to make a difference, get out in the world, take time away from the internet, and make a difference like I know you can.