Unless you want to expose yourself to the constant inundation of piss that social media has become, you have to curate and block aggressively. Shared block lists that you just subscribe to are one of the few useful innovations Bluesky has made and they need to be standard for all social media in the future.
Thanks to those lists I am blocked by 165 people. I don't insult anyone, I don't even swear. I suspect I get on these lists simply by being a white male (which is I guess obvious from my posts).
The reason is obviously not being a "white male" - because there are plenty of white males on Bluesky. If these are the kind of comments you make there it's no wonder people block you.
I don't know what a "soft block" would be, either someone is blocking you or they aren't. Anything that makes curation difficult is doomed to fail because bots and assholes scale exponentially while my time is precious, linear and all too limited. Harsh general mechanisms are sometimes necessary, and no one owes you their time or space.
Apparently I'm blocked by two people. I have absolutely no idea why - maybe it's because I follow Hank Green and he's being cancelled? I barely even use Bluesky. But they have every right to do it and they don't owe me an explanation.
Then again if racists block me it's probably for the best.
I, politely, corrected some people who were posting factually inaccurate anti-AI misinformation.
I was mocked and insulted, called transphobic by someone I had no way of knowing was Trans, accused of mansplaining, and called misogynistic by people I didn't know (or care to know) were women. None of them bothered to discuss the original issue.
It's like arguing about geo-politics with the dude who sleeps in the dumpster behind the liquor store. Even if I win... What was the point?