I guess the author's "boiling hatred to bad tech support articles" leads to some overreach

This doesn't block you from visiting MSN, but it does stop their articles from appearing in search. The reason is that MSN just re-hosts articles from other sites rather than provide anything of value. MSN posts often outrank their original source because Microsoft is pushing it hard on Windows/Bing/Edge.

For example: https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/jodie-foster-heckled-a... is just a re-hosted version https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/jod...

My hope in hiding MSN is to allow the original sources to rise back up to the top.

msn.com is actually useful from time-to-time as they have syndicated articles which are otherwise stuck behind paywalls on other sites.