a mute option that completely removes users of your choice from view.

I'm not a coder, but have discussed this with Marky, Pharesim, and others that are, and what I understood was that because the frontends show the data stored in the blocks, the complete obfuscation of particular accounts can only be done globally, not per users preference. I could certainly have misunderstood, so you might seek contradiction of my above claim.

I remember being very excited when Ned gave the presentation in Korea where he introduced SMTs, Oracles, and 1a1v. He also discussed communities, and at the time the concept seemed to enable communities to limit whom could access their content, up or down vote on it, and more. None of that came to fruition, and communities today are just interest groups, and nothing more. Sun bought Ned out, Steem became Sun's privately owned platform, and Hive became my new home and I've never looked back.

Would have changed the world, I think, had the extant plutocracy not viciously opposed 1a1v and their monopoly on governance.