Sounds like a good opportunity for a distinction between banning and opting out, or at a note field where mods can put some text pertaining to the reasoning behind it. I feel like you and the community will be better served with some nuance around banning domains.

On a side note, I think HN had a long history of non-toxic behavior but I'm starting to see a shift. It reminds me of when Reddit grew and the crowd became more and more unruly. Has the community grown quickly recently or have moderation priorities changed? Sorry I don't have any evidence lined up for this, just an anecdotal observation for now. Seems apropos to this issue in particular.

If a group of users here are disrespectful enough to attack creators for personal reasons and it's boiling over like this, that's a really bad sign.