Does reporting someone automatically mute them?

Solution 1:

I myself have reported a lot of people, mainly for Communication abuse, but never were those people muted for me. I had to do it manually (in the scoreboard with the speaker icon). Otherwise, even though they were reported, I could still read their chat message or hear them speak through the in-game voice chat. When did you experience...

"I (happily) never see any messages from them for the rest of the game"

...after reporting someone ? How many time did that happen ?

This feature could come from a very recent patch but I doubt it. I see two possible option :

• They were juste tired of spamming chat and just surrendered (Unlikely but it can happen)
• Your report (which certainly was not their frist report) caused them to being muted but not only for you. They were muted by the Valve's communication abuse ban system which prevent abusive user to write in the chat, draw on the minimap, talk in the chatroom etc. for a given amount of time (starting from 24h ban to a very long time)

The second option seems more likley to happen. However, if you have experienced this several times, there might be another mechanic at work that I'm not aware of.