ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has now grow to be the No. 3 most-blocked account on Bluesky, after receiving its official verification on Friday, in accordance with third-party trackers. Bluesky customers, unsurprisingly, are angry concerning the authorities account being hosted on the platform. Many are recommending that others block the account immediately or subscribe to a block record that features all of the U.S. government’s official accounts.
The blocklist was launched after the White Home and different authorities businesses beneath the Trump administration signed up for Bluesky last October to publish messages blaming Democrats for the federal government shutdown. The accounts that joined on the time included the Departments of Homeland Safety, Commerce, Transportation, the Inside, Well being and Human Companies, State, and Protection, along with the White Home itself.
The transfer made the White Home one of many most-blocked accounts on Bluesky, and right this moment it stays within the No. 2 place, simply behind Vice President J.D. Vance, per stats shared on the monitoring web site Clearsky. (The positioning leverages Bluesky’s API to trace which accounts are probably the most blocked and different blocking exercise.)
ICE, nonetheless, didn’t be part of Bluesky in October. In keeping with Bluecrawler’s Join Date Checker, the account @icegov.bsky.social joined the social community on November 26, 2025.
The account was verified a couple of days in the past in accordance with the independently-run Verified Account Tracker, which means that both Bluesky’s staff didn’t have sufficient info to use the verification checkmark, was someway unaware of the account’s existence (uncertain!), or was internally debating deal with the difficulty. Bluesky hasn’t responded to a request for remark.
One tracker now exhibits the ICE account as being over 60% of the way in which to being the most-blocked Bluesky account.
ICE right this moment has many accounts throughout different social media websites, together with X, Instagram, Fb, YouTube, and LinkedIn. These accounts are typically verified on platforms which have a verification mechanism, with YouTube being an exception.
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The choice from Bluesky to host and confirm ICE establishes the social community as one which’s now becoming in additional with different, bigger social media giants, slightly than with the unique ethos of the open social net referred to as fediverse, the place the consumer group is extra accountable for which accounts acquire consideration and traction.
The fediverse, which represents a community of impartial however interconnected social media platforms, contains apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard, and, to some extent, Instagram Threads, although Meta’s app isn’t totally federated. The U.S. authorities doesn’t have Mastodon accounts, however customers can follow accounts like @potus on Threads from their Mastodon accounts, in the event that they select.
One motive for avoiding Mastodon, an open supply federated app that runs on the ActivityPub protocol, may very well be its smaller dimension. But additionally, any authorities account becoming a member of this community may very well be simply blocked by particular person server operators. This wouldn’t forestall the account from establishing its personal server to publish to the fediverse, however different communities might refuse to federate (interoperate) with that server, vastly diminishing its attain.
Mastodon’s founder Eugen Rochko, who stepped down as CEO in November, citing burnout, lately posted an anti-ICE message on Mastodon, noting that “Abolish ICE” doesn’t go “almost far sufficient” to handle the issue within the U.S.
A day later, he announced he was opting his account out of the bridge that connects Mastodon with Bluesky.
Bridging know-how, which incorporates the mission referred to as Bridgy Fed, is supposed to permit completely different decentralized platforms to attach with one another, even when they run completely different protocols, as is the case with Bluesky, which runs on AT Protocol. Coincidentally, Bridgy Fed today launched a way to add domain blocklists to bridged accounts, which might conceivably enable fediverse customers to dam the federal government businesses posting on Bluesky.
Reached for remark, Rochko wouldn’t affirm whether or not or not ICE’s participation on Bluesky was a think about his resolution to go away the bridge, saying that the choice was a “private” one.
Nonetheless, there has typically been rigidity between the fediverse and the environment, or the decentralized social platform that features Bluesky and different, newer networks and apps like Blacksky, Northsky Social, and extra. As a result of the networks have completely different approaches to decentralization, they every have their very own supporters and critics, a few of whom can’t even agree that the networks ought to be bridged within the first place.
