How something is supposed to be used is not the same thing as what it is capable of being used for. As you say: "I think some people are using mute the way I would use hush.".

And the mute function, as it is currently implemented, is too open to abuse.

Duplicate posts for a link doesn't really help, as that doesn't scale: if person A posts an article, and person B is muted by person A and so creates a new post, and person C is muted by person B and so creates a new post... You'd end up getting to a point with enough users that people cannot look at all discussions of a particular link. Not to mention that that only helps with discussions of the link itself, as opposed to people trying to reply to someone within the discussion.

My two cents? Adding tools to help people do what they are already able to do is great. Adding tools to enable people to censor other people is not. So. Keep hush and ignore feature as-is, but change mute to only prevent you from seeing their comments.

Now, that being said, a way to flag posts for admin/mod attention would help.