Being able to block authors helps with the social side of the site: if I'm following someone whose activity frequently puts an author I don't want to see in my feed, my only option right now is to unfollow them. I'd rather just block the author and keep the HC user.

Yes, this would be so useful! Like, if I've read a couple books from that author already and I know I do not vibe with their writing, it would be very helpful especially to clean recommendations up.

Brilliant for boycotting. Beyond that I could see myself using it to filter out some really big names I know I'm not interested in to clean up my recs for a specific genre. I love this idea!