Mute vs Block

Mute and block are the two main moderation actions you can take against another account on X, and the difference between them matters more than newcomers expect.

Mute hides the account's tweets and retweets from your home feed and notifications. The muted user can still see your posts, follow you, reply to you, and quote-tweet you. They are not notified that you muted them. You can also mute specific words or phrases, which is useful for filtering spoilers, trigger words, or topics you want to disengage from.

Block is harder. The blocked account cannot follow you, view your tweets while logged in, message you, or see your profile in any meaningful way. They are notified (passively) if they try to interact with your account. Block is two-way: you also can't see their content while logged in.

When to use mute: someone tweets a lot about a topic you don't care about, you want to disengage without drama, or you want to avoid public confrontation. Most everyday moderation is best done with mute. It is silent and reversible.

When to use block: an account is harassing you, sending threats, repeatedly tagging you in bad faith, or you simply don't want them to interact with you at all. Block is the right tool for boundaries; mute is the right tool for feed hygiene.

There's a third option, "block and report", which triggers X's content moderation review. Use it for clear policy violations: targeted harassment, slurs, threats, doxxing.

Mass blocklists were popular for a while as a way to preemptively block thousands of accounts associated with bad-faith behavior. X has limited the API access that powered most of these, so they're less common now.