When I started out here, I was reading a lot of meta posts. They were helpful to me as a newbie. Slowly but surely, I got sick of the meta posts that are written purely to get clicks and stopped ever clicking. The algorithm listened and they rarely show in my feed anymore.

Yes, the mute button is all we need if we don't want to read a particular writer. I agree that the censorship path of inoffensive content is a can of worms that shouldn't be opened.