My reading of "hiding replies" was that people who follow the replier would still see the reply as part of their normal feed. So you are not silencing them for their audience. Which is fair.

The removal of links to yourself is also very welcome.

Both tools have cons, and there's methods to work around them / prevent them from taking effect. But they address the default easy/trivial ways in which people can pollute other users, so in practice the value for users should prove high.