RE: The mute feature. Does it fix anything?
I rarely use the mute feature and it's mostly to counteract extremely toxic trolling. I have ran into issues in the past where people simply like to argue for arguments sake and while I can inherently refuse to argue, acknowledge their points, and establish my own beliefs over and over again in a non-hostile way, some people simply refuse to accept that. In those situations it turns into countless comments and replies of me not answering questions that I feel people have to answer for themselves and me trying to explain that I can't define someone else's beliefs or feelings about something, but only share my own. Generally it's best just to stop wasting my time and theirs after countless comments and replies trying to establish a basis of communication.
The point here is that you put forth an effort. You didn't do it simply over disagreement. The person that muted me (there have been a few, but only one really mattered to me) is someone I had some cool conversations with and we agreed on a lot of things. I didn't agree in this one case and that was enough to be muted. He also frequently recommends mute to other people.
I thought I'd write this post so people might give a little more thought when considering mute.
There are definitely times to use it. I've had to use it myself.
I like this perspective! It's always a bit sad to me to feel that there is no ability to communicate and to have to approach things from that direction, but it isn't something I do lightly. Hopefully with higher awareness we can give people some new perspective!