I understand where you’re coming from, and I’d probably agree with you if Medium were just an author’s private website, but because Medium is a public forum and a publishing platform for many authors, my view is that allowing an author to block critical responses deceives readers by creating a misimpression about the reception of a particular article. To use an analogy, if a corporation has its CEO speak in a boardroom and then stops employees from offering critical responses to his talk, that’s totally fine, but if the same CEO is invited to speak in a big public lecture hall and decides to take questions (entirely his choice to do so) but then has the organizers shut off the mic as soon as anyone starts asking a critical question, that’s not okay. Just as I’d be fine with the CEO speaking in public and deciding to take no questions at all, I’m also totally okay with authors who publish articles here but don’t permit any responses. The only thing I’m not okay with is authors who publish articles and permit responses but then use the “blocking” function to make the ones they don’t like disappear. That’s what I think Medium shouldn’t permit.