But some behavior is bad enough where it was warranted to actually block a user. Like, if someone in your replies is saying all kinds of awful things, like, blocking them means that they cannot interact at all. Meaning, someone who follows you wouldn't see that abusive behavior, because they couldn't do it.

Just muting someone means that while you don't see the abusive behavior, your followers will unless every single one of them also mutes that user.

It's a bad decision to eliminate blocking and then try and argue that actually muting is what people want.