@davidrevoy cool, thanks for the answer! Using Mastodon as a comment system is super clever, especially coupled with the fact that there is a reputation filter that's basically built-in due to active moderation on the instance.
I was thinking that you (or somebody else using a similar script) would want to hide some posts in rare cases (e.g. out of caution for cases that are borderline okay from the instance rules), but if they actually reflect your own account's block rules that's even better!