While I have some deep appreciation and respect for the work of the moderation team, and their stance on free speech, I think that the benefits of this "2-way blocking" are nothing compared to the issues that this will inevitably bring to both the dialogue and interactions within the site. Not to mention the ways that it could be exploited to damage, mislead, and even indirectly hurt users.
When you 2 way block someone, you are not just blocking that person. You are also limiting other people's interaction with them and exclude diversity of opinions from the threads you create, which may have been enriched by their presence there.
It's also very frustrating since it's turned on by default. I find this disastrous, it means that the more users get blocked, the less interactions we'll have with each others, even if we are not in someone's blacklist, we'll still get threads with fractured information and less contribution.
....
I hope that I'm wrong, but I feel that the line between a place of discussion and a safe space is being drawn, I've been thinking that for a while now.
Some people want nothing but support (completely understandable given their situation btw) but it's not impossible to have both without damaging the identity of this forum with such drastic measures, even if they look innocuous at first.