Muting effectively just means you don't see the instances posts, but you can see the users comments if they are federated with your instance. For example, I have kbin blocked, but I can still interact with kbin users - when they reply to my comments or posts, which they can still do, I simply just don't get a notification for it.
Dessalines doesn't care about stuff like this. Beehaw has been asking for proper moderation tools forever and effectively just told to get fucked every time.
Beehaw is still using version 0.18.4 which will soon celebrate its first birthday. We made countless moderation improvements since then, but of course Beehaw won't get those if they refuse to upgrade.
Most instances are totally defederated from Hexbear. They're not my problem at all. My problem is literally the development team and their willingness to not only accept but further the cause of propaganda through their instance's curated biases.
Not just the politics, but the news threads I feel have degenerated into ragebait topics with shallow conversation. I used to find a conversation or 2 a day to participate in, but now I don't want to touch many news or politics threads.