Currently, you can't remove a follower on Bluesky, only block them. See [How to Block Users on Bluesky] for a tutorial.
Explanation
The way Bluesky works is like this: when you block someone, a record is created in your account that you follow them, and when you block someone, a record is created in your account that you blocked them. When you block someone in your account that doesn't affect the "follow" record that exists in the account of the blocked user1.
If an user is following you and is blocked, they continue "following" you, however, because they're blocked, your posts won't appear on their feed, so it's as if they aren't following you anymore.
However, if you unblock the user, the posts will return to appearing on their feed, so it's like they start following you again automatically.
In particular, even the posts that were made before you unblocking the users will appear. Thus, if you post "I'll unblock John," while John, who follows you, is blocked, this post won't appear on John's feed, but after unblocking him it will appear.
Observations
When Your Only Tool is a Hammer: there are users who hesitate to block others in social networks because they believe the action is too "punitive." On the other hand, it seems that the action of "removing a follower" is wanted mainly because of bots that follow everybody automatically. I don't see reason to not punish these bots.
References
- https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/1160#issuecomment-1677642129 (accessed 2024-09-19) ↩︎
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