I've been using X more lately and the larger audience there brings up very different issues to those we find on Hive. There are users make up networks of paid agents carrying out a variety of agendas, plus just a larger array of dysfunctional people. They have both mute and block, so I have been thinking about why/when to mute and why/when to block. There are some people who I don't mind commenting on what I say and seeing what I post, but who I don't want to be seeing in my feed - but there are also people who I don't want to add comments to my posts too because they are of ill intent and they just take up time and distract/disrupt deliberately. Sometimes it's obvious that they are doing this for some political or economic reason and other times it's unclear.. but either way, the block is needed there.
Another category that's obvious on X is the bots that post adverts for various things or the porn accounts that 'follow' and 'comment' from time to time. I just block all of these immediately. Having a block feature is also a way to reduce the requirement for any kind of organised 'policing' via downvotes, since it gives people a way to reject spammers themselves.