(If you want to block or mute individual accounts, please see the Blocking and Muting Accounts on Mastodon guide.)
Ordinary individual users do not have any means to block entire servers on Mastodon. The only people who can block servers are the server admins, through a process called defederation.
But what about the “block domain” option? Doesn’t that block servers?
If a user goes to a profile or post and clicks on the ⋯ button, this does bring up an option called “Block domain” which sounds like it would block a server. However, this option just mutes the server, it hides the server’s posts from you but does not hide your posts from the server.
So, if I’m concerned about a particular server, how do I block it?
If you’re an ordinary user, you have two options if you want to cut off communications with a specific server:
- Talk to your server’s admin and convince them to defederate the server you are concerned about.
OR
- Move your account to another server that has defederated that server.
If I move to another server, how do I find out if it blocks the server I’m worried about?
To see a server’s defederation list:
- Go to its website and click Learn More or ⋯, which takes you to its info page.
- Scroll down the info page until you get to the section marked Moderated Servers, and click this to open it.
- Scroll down the list until you get to the server you’re worried about. If it says “suspended” next to its name, that means the server has been defederated.
Note that for safety reasons some servers hide their defederation list, or obfuscate the names. If you are unable to see the defederation list, try messaging the server’s admin to ask if they have defederated the server you’re worried about.