I'm in the same boat as you are; a user seems to have muted me on ideological grounds as well without having ever even spoken to me. The moderation system is good overall, I feel. People might use it in unfortunate ways, but the concept is a good one, even if it's easily abused. The end result is that certain users will only see things that they agree with, or if they do see dissenting opinions, they can rest assured that they will always have the final word and feel like they're always right. It doesn't really affect me though, it's more their loss than anything else. I feel that the discussion is what makes Hubski what it is, and they're losing out on it. If a discussion begins to get too heated I'll just politely leave and even then that's only happened to me once before. I don't use the moderation functions at all really. The only thing I filter out are some (at the moment, 2) spammers on #technology. If the practice does become popular though, I'll personally just leave Hubski and find another site.