Blocking anyone's content so you can't see it is fine.

This would be "ignore."

Blocking anyone's content so others can't see it is not.

This would be literally no site functionality on Hubski.

Mute doesn't censor. Mute prevents you from saying anything in the first place. Say whatever you want on the street; I'm not required to suffer it in my own house.

With your ideal muting function, you've got to rationalize that you're taking discussional surrogacy over people who view your posts. You're making a decision for them. Why would you do that?

Because it's divisive, off-topic, inflammatory, antagonistic, obscene, or otherwise offensive. Next?

But the discussions people can have on your posts are entirely comprised, owned, and made by contributors. This comment is "my content". Not yours.

Sure. But the blanket of words you choose to spread out are on my lawn.

I can't do shit about your words. But I can sure as hell keep you off my lawn. Blogger, Myspace, Facebook, Tumblr, Wordpress and pretty much everything but 4chan, Reddit, Digg and Slashdot work like this.

This is mine; the post and your comments are yours.

And you are posting it with my tacit approval because it's my post. If it were on some other post owned by some other person, I'd have no ability to do anything about it. It's their lawn, not mine.

And that's the metaphor to wrap your head around: Hubski exists to follow users, not subjects. In other words, you aren't going to a party at 2nd and Blanchard, you're going to a party at Run's House. If you say something offensive to Run, he's well within his rights to show you the door - your offensive comment hangs in the air; everyone heard it. Run, meanwhile, doesn't have to suffer you at his parties anymore. You can look in through the windows, but you can't mix it up.

It's been that way as long as I've been here, and I shall be here so long as it continues to be so.

Being a post originator shouldn't let you silence contributors from other contributors.

Then maybe you should find another site to play on. Because on here, it does.

By doing so, you're saying their content is yours.

By doing so, they're making their comments with my permission.

"I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!"

"You've had too much to drink. Go home."

So two things really. Why do you think you can make content-viewing decisions for people who view your posts?

Because the site deliberately, tacitly gives me permission to do so. If it didn't, I wouldn't participate.

And do you think you own the comments from contributors when they write on your posts?

I think Hubski owns everything any of us writes, but I'm not a lawyer. I know that there's built-in site functionality whose explicit purpose is to give me moderation power over who can and can't post on my content, and I find it advantageous to use it.

There's got to be a better word than "own" by the way.

Yeah, you didn't try very hard. Give "permit" a shot and see how much better the analogy works.