> - At the very least, knowing HN users' affiliations and posting tendencies is key to quickly blocking unwanted ideological noise, whether it concerns international politics or programming languages

This is IMO the approach that makes the most sense. Let users ignore other users, rather than enforcing bans/shadowbans on the whole userbase.

While I personally would rather not block anyone, I think everyone should have the ability to police the content they see, but in most cases not what other people see.