to supress notifications we need a special permission from apple called an “entitlement”. We want to have encrypted mute lists. To properly handle encryped mutes we need to have the ability to hide notifications if a user you’ve muted is on your encrypted mute list.

The relay has no way of knowing if you are muting someone on an encrypted mute list and will trigger a notification regardless, so we need this ability to hide a notification locally.

Apple has refused to give us the entitlement since the end of last year. They haven’t given us a reason. 

 Entitlement seems only be for critical notifications (emergency alerts, alarms, overriding ringer silencers, etc).

Are you triggering the notify service directly from Damus Relay? If so I would work on "filtering" the notifies Relay-side. 

In the same way that you would filter Relay-side that Bob only gets notifies on events for Bob's posts (and not Sally's).... A similar Relay-side filter should be able to filter out events from muted parties too.

Then use Apple Notify service under "Active" level, without need for entitlement. 

https://m.primal.net/IMBJ.png  

 Use Android?