> show which responses you yourself approve of

that's exactly why it feels like power over others to me. it shouldn't be for me to say whose responses appear in *others*'s feeds. that's too prone to abuse. we all know social media is being used to spread misinformation, and IMHO it is very important to be able to follow up to such misinformation, ideally reaching whoever got the initial post, offering contradicting evidence. we'd be setting ourselves up for horribly manipulative abuse if we enabled spreaders of misinformation to prevent dissent.

now, I'm also quite sympathetic to the notion of avoiding and containing toxic behaviors. as you point out yourself, preventing followups doesn't stop people from responding by other means.

now, when it comes to collective moderation, maybe there's something to be explored about enabling posters to set *advisory* filters, that followers could choose to adopt or disregard. that seems superior to preventing followups IMHO.