I don't think trust has to be mutual. How to deal with npubs I do trust and want to have in my WoT but who fill half my timeline which is too much for me to keep up with? For my daily reading I want to curate a high signal to noise ratio list relying on my WoT to filter out the signal among other npubs who are chatting much more than I'm capable of following.

I would like to privately mute stuff (temporarily) without making anyone feeling personally rejected. I see public mute lists in my WoT as a way to curate a "safer" subset of the nostrverse removing obviously malicious npubs. A lower signal to noise ratio is still signal I want to invite. Interacting a lot is just a different way to use nostr which does not fit how I use my timeline.