it's unavoidable to center Elon here but can we just take a step back and appreciate how stupid, bad, and completely antithetical to a usable website this idea is? blocking has been a feature on like everything since phpBB forums because it literally just works. it's an easy way to curate your experience without escalating and it's a logical imitation of being able to simply avoid a person in real life. the idea of removing this in favor of nothing but mutes is just goofy as fuck (and if you make muting the new "block", what's even the difference between them? people will just use them basically the same way!).

Muting means other people can still comment on your stuff, and everyone else but you can see it.

Its so transphobes and homophobes can continue commenting on LGBT people's content.

Lemmy's "block" is essentially a "mute" function, too. It makes it so that you don't see any more content from a user, but they can still make comments on your stuff.