What you're saying makes sense, but I think the big issue here is that blocking as it currently works on Reddit is harmful because it's too easy to abuse. If the only reason for the change is familiarity, then you'll just make the platform worse for actual users just to lessen the barrier of entry.
So, why does any platform even need this, besides familiarity? If you don't want to see a user, hiding them from you will achieve that perfectly.
I really can only think of malicious reasons. Shutting down an argument or badmouthing someone without giving them a means to respond or defend themselves.
Like, if it's to avoid stalkers, this would do literally nothing to achieve that. They can just log out and continue doing what they were doing.
I don't think kbin should be blindly adopting bad ideas even if everyone else does them. If it was actually beneficial, sure, have kbin go for it. But this doesn't seem to solve a problem, nor does it actually improve our quality of life. Rather, it does the opposite. It introduces a problem we could just do without by keeping what we have currently.