This wasn’t the default behavior? If something is public there is no point blocking it for a single user.

Be more accurate if they renamed it to ‘mute.’

Isn’t that what blocking usually does on other platforms? I don’t use Twitter but if I block someone (for example, on Lemmy) then I expect that I won’t have to see anything that person writes. I don’t expect that that person won’t see anything I write, because that’s a silly thing to expect about something I deliberately make available to the entire internet.

That’s better than the alternative. Otherwise they’ll know you’ve blocked them when they compare their feed to your mutual friends’.