• Mon. May 20th, 2024

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Worried that someone has blocked you on Facebook? There are certain signs you should look out for.
someone using facebook on their phone in front of a laptop
Chinnapong/Shutterstock
Key Takeaways

If you think someone’s blocked you on Facebook, search for them or look at previous messages: in most cases, someone who has blocked you won’t appear at all.
Ask mutual friends to check if the contact’s account has been deleted or deactivated.
You can’t invite anyone who has blocked or unfriended you to events, nor tag them in posts.

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Facebook doesn’t show you when someone has blocked you, but there are numerous ways to tell if someone has blocked your account on the platform. Use these tips to find out if someone has blocked you on Facebook.
How to See Who Blocked You on Facebook
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1 Ask a Mutual Friend to Check if Their Profile Is Still Up

This is the most straightforward way to find out if someone has blocked you on Facebook since you need to determine whether the person in question has deactivated their Facebook account or deleted it, rather than blocking you.

These things can look a lot alike, so it’s easy to think someone who has gotten rid of their Facebook profile altogether has blocked you.

So how can you tell if someone has blocked you, rather than deactivated their account? Ask a mutual friend. If you and the person you’re worried has blocked you have a friend in common, ask that mutual contact to quietly check whether this person’s profile is still online.

If their profile is gone, then they probably haven’t blocked you: they’ve gotten rid of Facebook. If their account is still active, they could have blocked you. There are further ways to tell, so we’ll come back to these options.

Here’s what else you can do to check if you’ve been blocked on Facebook.
2 Use a Mutual Friend’s Profile to Find Out Who Blocked You on Facebook

Head to the profile of someone you and the person who has potentially blocked you both know. You’ll be able to see a brief list of their friends; click on See All. It should tell you how many contacts you have in common.

You can scroll through their contacts or just type into the field which reads “Search Friends”.

If you can see their name and profile picture, you can let out a sigh of relief, as this signifies that they haven’t blocked you. If you can’t see them, there’s another potential answer for their absence. They might have deactivated their whole account.
3 Try to Tag Someone Who Might’ve Blocked You

Normally, if you want to tag a friend in a meme or post, you simply write their name and click on the relevant link to their profile. They’ll be notified and will see it the next time they log in. But if you’ve been blocked by that person, you won’t be able to tag them in any posts.

You also need to determine whether you’ve been blocked or simply unfriended. Whether you can tag someone who has unfriended you on Facebook depends on the other person’s privacy settings. It also depends on the settings of a group you might be a part of: if the other person isn’t in the private group, you can’t tag them anyway.
4 Use Facebook Search to Check Who Has Blocked You
muo makeuseof on fb facebook

Search for your friend on Facebook. Simply sign in, and you’ll see the search box at the top-left of the page. Similarly, if you’re using the Facebook app to learn who blocked you, the search function is at the top of your feed.

A list of profiles and pages will come up. Toggle the results by clicking on People. If you’ve been blocked, the profile of that person won’t show up in this setting. However, if you’re searching All, there’s a chance you will see them, even in the event that they have blocked you, but you probably won’t be able to click on it.

You’ll be able to partially view the profile (depending on their privacy settings) if they’ve simply unfriended you. If they’ve deleted their Facebook account, however, they won’t appear at all.

When searching, you might still see photos of the person in question, but any tags will revert to dead links if they have blocked your account.
5 Check Previous Facebook Messages

This method relies on you having communicated with the person before, which doesn’t help when it comes to relative strangers. Try to remember anything this contact has written on your profile or, if you’ve stopped others posting on your Facebook timeline, a mutual friend’s profile. This could be a birthday message, a festive greeting, or anything incidental.

In most cases, if you’ve been blocked, those messages disappear completely. Even their likes might disappear. In rarer cases, the messages will still be there, but the person’s profile image won’t show up.
6 Look on Facebook Messenger for Someone Who Might’ve Blocked You
how to see all on messenger browser

If you’ve previously spoken to this person using Facebook Messenger, this is another indicator you can check.

You should do this via the Facebook website because the app still sometimes shows blocked accounts.

Go to the Messenger section and click on See All in Messenger in the drop-down menu. Access the conversation you had with the contact. If you’ve been blocked, you won’t be able to click on their name to look at their profile either.

You won’t be able to send them a message either: instead of the text box, there will be a message saying, “This person is not contactable on Messenger.”

Note that, in most cases, the person’s name won’t appear at all if they’ve deleted their account, but deletion is different from deactivation. If they’ve deleted their account, their Messenger thread will read “Facebook User”. Be aware that they could still be using Messenger without being on Facebook; nonetheless, if you can contact them here, at least you’re still friends.
7 Try to Invite Them to Events

People create events on Facebook to coordinate meet-ups, including birthday parties, dinners, and Christmas celebrations. But if you’ve been blocked, you won’t be able to invite that individual.

Go to Events > Create Event > Create Private Event. After entering the details, you’ll need to invite specific people by tagging them. Alternatively, go to an event created by someone else, and either click on Invite Friends in the “Go with friends” section of the page or click on the ellipsis at the bottom right of the event to also Invite Friends.

If that person isn’t there, they’ve either blocked you, unfriended you, or aren’t on Facebook anymore. Similarly, you can’t invite anyone who has blocked you to join or like pages.
8 Try to Block Someone Who May Have Blocked You
How to block someone on Facebook and what that means

By checking whether you can block someone, you’re also checking whether they’ve deactivated their Facebook. It’s similar to tagging: you can only tag people you’re not blocked from following and tagging. And so, you can only block people who haven’t blocked you.

If using a browser to access Facebook, sign in and click on the down arrow at the top-right of your feed. Go to Settings & privacy > Settings > Blocking and enter a name under Block users. After clicking Block, a list of profiles will appear, giving you the option to block them.

If that person isn’t listed, they’ve either deactivated or deleted their account, or they have blocked you first.

If you’re using the Facebook app, go onto your contact’s profile, click on the ellipsis to access Profile settings, then try clicking on Block. If you can’t even get onto their profile, they’ve deleted their Facebook account anyway.

You can also block this person on Facebook Messenger. Doing so doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve not blocked you on Facebook itself—Facebook is merely giving you the option to stop them contacting you via Messenger alone.

The only way to be 100 percent certain whether you’ve been blocked is to ask the person directly. You could also ask a mutual contact to find out, although you need to tread carefully. A mutual friend can at least tell you whether your contact’s profile has been deactivated or deleted.

If it turns out someone has blocked you on Facebook, you’ll likely feel frustrated and angry, especially if you feel you’ve done nothing wrong. But in most cases, it’s not worth worrying about. It could be something small, like a simple misunderstanding.
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