Web of inferred-muting/blocking/hiding is inherently flawed.

For starters at least N of your ‘network’ needs to make an manual effort to report or mute.

Secondly, if it is an attempt to hide repetitive posts, they can be detected far easier without human interaction.

Third, there is no visibility of what your missing. Damus shows ‘Post by muted user’ which helps at least make it opt-in and obvious something you’re not seeing has been masked.

Likely worst of all it literally is a guaranteed way to bubble your network - accidentally, or maliciously if someone creates a few accounts, gets followed by a few people you follow, and then use those malicious accounts to hit the N limit.

I’m defence of how this was considered - must of the spam we faced a couple months ago was repetitive and dumb. Long term it will evolve and any benefit lost anyway.