Which X (Twitter) Lists are you on? How to see them and get off one

X's Lists help gives these steps:

1. 1

   On iPhone

   Tap your profile icon at the top, then Lists. Tap the More icon, then Lists you're on.

2. 2

   On Android

   Go to your profile, tap the 3 dots, then select Lists you're on.

3. 3

   On x.com

   Click Lists in the navigation menu. Click the More icon next to the new List icon, then Lists you're on.

That screen shows public Lists. X's Help with Lists says: "Only you can view your private lists and private lists owned by other accounts will not be visible to you." So going by X's words, a private List you're on won't show there. We haven't tested it with a second account.

Nobody needs your permission to add you. X's steps for adding someone say: "You don't need to be following an account to add them to your List." The only accounts X says can't add you are the ones you've blocked.

X's help doesn't say, either way. Its page on the Notifications timeline lists "which of your posts have been liked, the latest Reposts (of your posts), posts directed to you (replies and mentions), your new List followers, as well as your new account followers". That's people following your Lists, not people adding you to theirs. X's page on reporting says a List can be reported "from the detail page of a List, or from the Notifications tab", so Lists do reach that tab in some form.

Twitter did notify people, and tried to stop once. On 13 February 2017, its safety account posted: "Starting today, you won't get notified when you are added to a list." Just over two hours later, it posted: "We heard your feedback - this was a misstep. We're rolling back the change and we'll keep listening." TechCrunch's report pointed out that "being added to lists can also be a form of harassment in and of itself."

Private Lists aren't meant to notify anyone. In December 2019, Vice reported that a bug sometimes sent the alert anyway, and that it may explain one that read "Morgan Culbertson added you to list Haters". Twitter said "this was a bug and has since been resolved." In January 2020, a writer at The Next Web described getting "a random notification that you've been added to a list", and suggested private Lists, since people you add to one "won't get a notification". We found nothing from X on these alerts since.

X gives one way: block the person who made it. X's Lists help says: "To remove yourself from a List you will need to block the creator of that List." Twitter's help said the same in 2012.

1. 1

   Open the List

   Go to Lists you're on, as above, and open the List you want to leave.

2. 2

   Block its creator

   Tap or click the More icon next to the share button, then Block next to the creator's @handle. On Android, X's steps go from the List straight to Block @username.

X's app text adds that a block "prevents" the creator "from including you in any of their Lists, including this one", and that unblocking later "won't automatically add you back to their Lists." A block does more than that, though: you stop following each other, and they can't follow you again or DM you while it lasts. What a block does, and who sees it.

Muting won't do it: X's Lists help names blocking as the way off, and X's mute help says nothing about Lists. If a List is abusive, you can report it from the List's page.

Lists are public unless their creator makes them private. X's help says: "The default setting for your List is public (anyone can follow the List)." Following a List doesn't mean following the people on it: "You can follow Lists without following the individual accounts in that List." X's Help with Lists covers the rest:

So a private List lets you read accounts without following them: can you hide your followers list on X? What a protected account hides, and from whom: how to make your X account private.

X's limits, now and before:

Today's numbers are on X's Help with Lists. The older ones come from Twitter's post of 30 May 2013: "You can now make up to 1,000 lists (up from 20), and each list can include up to 5,000 accounts (up from 500)."

Twitter's help said "Add up to 5 Lists" about pinned Lists until January 2023. X's app still says "You'll need to remove one pinned Timeline before adding another", so there is a cap; X doesn't say what it is. The cap of 5,000 accounts per List has nothing to do with the limit on how many accounts you can follow: X's follow limits.

These are the dated changes to Lists we could source.

People put accounts on Lists by topic, and researchers have read that as a sign of what an account knows about. Cognos, a research system from 2012, worked out an account's topics from the "names and descriptions of the Lists containing the user". Of the 54 million accounts on Twitter in August 2009, its authors later found 6,843,466 on at least one List, and about 1.3 million on more than 10.

Klout, which analyzed people's social media accounts until it closed in May 2018, came to the same view. Its researchers found, using over 23 million Lists, that "features derived from Twitter Lists, Wikipedia, internet webpages and Twitter Followers are especially good indicators of expertise". A study run in 2016 counted anyone on at least 10 Lists about a topic as an expert on it, and found 741 thousand of them.

We don't read Lists. Being added to a List isn't a follow, so it doesn't change your followers list, and our checks don't see it.

A block does show. If you block a List's creator to leave the List and they followed you, they drop out of your followers list, and our next check reports them as having unfollowed you: a followers list can't tell a block from an unfollow. If you followed them and they use UnfollowMonkey, our DM tells them you unfollowed them.