ICE became one of the most banned accounts on Bluesky after being verified

ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is now it The #3 most banned account on BlueskyAfter receiving official verification on Friday, according to Third party tracking. bluesky users, UnsurprisinglyWe are angry About the government account that is hosted on the platform. Many recommend that others block the account directly or sign up for a block list that includes All official US government accounts.

The ban list was introduced after the White House and other government agencies under the Trump administration I signed up for Bluesky last October To post messages blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. the Accounts that joined at that time included The Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, Transportation, Interior, Health and Human Services, State, and Defense, as well as the White House itself.

This step was taken by the White House One of the most banned accounts over Bluesky, and today remains in second place, just behind Vice President J.D. Vance, according to statistics shared on the tracking site Clearsky. (The site leverages the Bluesky API to track the most blocked accounts and other blocking activity.)

However, ICE did not join Bluesky in October. according to Join Date Checker in BluecrawlerThe account @icegov.bsky.social joined the social network on November 26, 2025.

It was the account Verified A few days ago, according to what the Independent Administration reported Verified account trackingsuggesting that the Bluesky team did not have enough information to apply the verification flag, was unaware of the account’s existence (doubtful!), or was internally discussing how to handle the issue. Bluesky did not respond to a request for comment.

one track It now appears that the ICE account is more than 60% of the way to becoming the most banned Bluesky account.

Today’s ice has Many accounts Across other social media sites, including X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. These accounts are typically verified on platforms that have a verification mechanism in place, with YouTube being the exception.

Bluesky’s decision to host and verify ICE establishes the social network as one that now aligns more with larger social media giants, rather than the original ethos of the open social network known as the fediverse, where a community of users has more control over which accounts get attention and traction.

federalism, Which represents a network of independent and interconnected social media platforms, and includes applications such as MastodonPixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard, and to some extent Instagram Threads, although the Meta is not fully standardized. The US government doesn’t have Mastodon accounts, but users can Follow accounts like @potus on Threads From their Mastodon accounts, if they so choose.

One reason to avoid Mastodonan open source monolithic application that runs on the ActivityPub protocol, may be smaller in size. But also, any government account that joins this network can easily be banned by individual server operators. This will not prevent an account from setting up its own server to publish on Fediverse, but other communities may refuse to federate (interoperate) with that server, greatly reducing its reach.

Mastodon founder Eugene Rushko, who He resigned as CEO in NovemberCiting Burnout, it was recently published Anti-ICE message on Mastodonnoting that the “Abolish ICE” initiative does not go “far enough” to address the problem in the United States

One day later, it is Announce He was picking his account from the bridge that connected Mastodon to Bluesky.

Bridging technology, which includes The project is known as BridgeFeedaims to allow different decentralized platforms to communicate with each other, even if they use different protocols, As is the case with BlueskyWhich runs on the AT protocol. Coincidentally, Bridgy Fed today launched a way to add domain blocklists to bridge accounts, which would allow federal users to block government agencies from posting on Bluesky.

When reached for comment, Rochko would not confirm whether or not ICE’s involvement on Bluesky was a factor in his decision to leave the bridge, saying the decision was a “personal” one.

However, there was often tension between the federation and… the weatherOr the decentralized social platform that includes Bluesky and Other networks and applications and newer He loves Blacksky, Northsky SocialAnd more. Because networks have different approaches to decentralization, each has its supporters and detractors, some I can’t even agree on the necessity of bridging networks In the first place.