What are muting and blocking? How do I block or mute another account?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Muting
• Blocking

Muting and blocking are both methods to handle unwanted notifications from or interactions with other iNaturalist users. 

Muting someone prevents you from receiving notifications about things they do, including commenting on your observations, messaging you, mentioning you, etc. Muting helps you ignore someone without preventing them from doing anything. 

Blocking someone prevents them from messaging you, commenting on your observations, identifying your observations, and otherwise interacting with you on iNaturalist. It also removes their observations from your search results and removes your observations from their search results. However, it does not make you invisible to them. They can still find your observations and view your profile, they just can't interact with you.

Muting

You can mute as many people as you want, but keep in mind that you'll be missing out on potentially important notifications, like identifications that shift the Community ID on your observations.

There are two ways to mute or unmute another account on iNaturalist.

1. On the website, go to the user's profile page and you'll see a Mute button. Click on it to mute that account. You can also unmute that user by clicking on the button again.

 
2. Go to the Relationships page in your Account Settings. Under Muted Users, type the account's username and select it to mute it. You can also unmute accounts on this page.

Blocking

Blocking is for situations where you just can't get along with someone and they won't leave you alone, despite your best efforts to settle disputes in a civilized manner. It is not a way to hide from people, to prevent identifications from people whose opinions you don't trust, or to opt out of the community ID (there's another setting for that). Thus, blocking works both ways: if you block someone, they can't interact with you, but you also can't interact with them. If you misuse it to prevent someone from identifying your observations, you also prevent yourself from identifying their observations.

You can only block three people. We think this is a reasonable number that accommodates the people who need blocking while preventing abuse of blocking - blocking should be used as a last resort. If you feel you need to block more than three people, please contact us.

If someone is harassing or stalking you on iNaturalist, including making multiple accounts to get around your block please let us know. If this represents a violation of our Terms of Use or represents other behavior we deem inappropriate for our site, we will investigate. 

To block another account, you will have to go to the Relationships page of your Account Settings and scroll down. Under Blocked Users, type the account's username and select it to Block it. You can also unblock an account on this page.