I have also... but those sites weren't federated were they?
The fediverse is not "a site"... it's a network of many independent sites. You can do whatever you want on your instance, but you don't get to control all the other instances.
If you demand the ability to mute other people and prevent them from communicating with each other, you are fundamentally in the wrong place. If you choose to make a public statement, the public gets to respond to it. Your choice is whether or not you want to read their response.