Blocked someone on Twitter? Maybe Not Completely.

So I was browsing my Twitter feed when I started to see a friend of mine tweet at someone I’ve blocked. (Yes, you can probably guess who it was that I’ve blocked on Twitter) We have a lot of mutual friends on social media, but I haven’t seen ANYTHING in a year. So I’m assuming this is due to some new change with Twitter.

Fact of the matter is, if you are using Twitter Lists, be aware that you can still see tweets from someone on that list to someone you’ve blocked… if that person was on the list originally. Blocking someone does not remove them from your lists.

Which seems like a completely backwards thing to me. You’d think blocking them would do that, but no.

So what is a person to do if they’ve blocked someone who was not just toxic in their life, but whose very name is a trigger? And then that name starts popping up in Twitter lists?

First, take a look through your Twitter lists. Look for that person (it’ll say blocked next to their name, helpfully). Even if they’re blocked – you can still see tweets from list members to that person. So, unblock them, remove them from the list, and then reblock them.

Ta-da. No more names popping up where they shouldn’t.

So how do you keep RT’s from people on your blocklist showing up in mentions or RTs? I know that on TweetDeck, you can mute a user. It works most of the time, and works separately from your Twitter account.

This seems to be a recent change – in a year I hadn’t seen this person’s name pop up in my Twitter feed. Likely, on the back end, they changed the way that lists work – so that it’s more like Twitter search (which doesn’t hide blocked users).

It’s frustrating. The changes they make to make Twitter faster, only seem to make it harder for people who’ve been harassed and need a block list.