So turns out the "hide everything from [domain]" function is flawed, it allows follow requests.
Another thing what's flawed about instance mutes (done by the USER) is that I can't look at a list of what I've muted, nor unmute them in the interface anywhere.
That and I just found out that the mute list only displays up to 50 people you've muted max, it'll just bump people off the list if you have more.
Could someone more technically inclined look into this?