How do I stop users I don't want to interact with being pushed to me?

I'm trying to stop content from specific user(s) being served to me, some of which I follow and some I don't. It seems like tiktok is serving me their content regardless of what I try and I'm not sure what more I can do. The subjects of the videos are triggering to me, and some of them include messages in the thumbnail, so its not enough to just not watch the videos, seeing the videos at all in my feeds and notifications is a problem for me and I'm trying to reduce that exposure.

For the ones I follow, I muted them which took them off my feed, but I was still getting emails about their posts from tiktok. I didn't see a way to specify I didn't want to see them in emails, and it seemed that no matter which email settings I toggled, digest emails would come as long as any options are enabled. So I've had to disable all email notifications completely.

For the ones I don't follow, there's not an option to mute their accounts, and I was occasionally getting them in my FYP, emails and notifications (people you may know, have interacted with in the past, etc). I can mark that I'm not interested in the videos, but I don't know how effective that is, I'm still seeing the posts in the first case, which I don't want, and I'm having to interact with the content to mark it Not Interested, which might further feed the algorithm.

I know some of these accounts IRL and if I block them outright it might create drama, I just don't want their content served up to me. But at this rate I don't blocking them would stop tiktok from sharing their content to me regardless.