Yeah, I swing the hammer as a last resort and the mute function I’ve used maybe once or twice so it’s easy to forget that one exists

I’m a mod (not on the sub in question) It’s not inherently against ToS but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a case. There has to be an appeal system but you can mute users who are abusing the system, that is, spamming the mailbox. For example, I once banned someone who was actively harassing some teenager, stalking them from one sub to the next and commenting creepy stuff at the kid. That user then spammed the mailbox with ad nauseam until we muted him just to stop the clutter. Another case was someone trying to use the sub to promote something they wanted members (and possibly money for) when we told them the community didn’t permit self-promotion and they wanted to argue about it nonstop until we muted them. Mods can abuse the mute function by muting without just cause. In which case you can report them to admin and see if anything comes of it. (Full disclosure, it may not. Even as mods, we can be ignored by admin like any pleb on the site.) If multiple people were reporting mods abusing the mute function, or say, being verbally abusive to users in the mailbox (where appeals are made), then admin can see all of the contents of the mailbox, messages, notes between mods, and see if action against those mods was called for. Just remember that Reddit is giant, largely anonymous bureaucracy.