Reading mute and block without moral panic

Mute and block are uncomfortable metrics. Teams fear that naming them will brand the product as unsafe. Avoiding them, however, leaves retention work half-blind.

A rising mute rate after a recommendation change can mean the suggestions are socially mismatched, not that the whole network is hostile. A stable block rate beside falling reply rates may point to boredom rather than danger.

We treat these signals as contextual. In a retention brief they appear beside friendship formation and unanswered prompts — never as a lone scare chart. Community and trust teams should sit in the readout when these cuts matter; product alone should not interpret them in isolation.