Curious if you're a native English speaker - the "-cide" suffix has a general root meaning of "to kill", which means that words ending in it generally have the opposite connotation to the word with the suffix.

E.g. "Eco" has positive connotations whereas "ecocide" has negative ones. Similarly, here "geno" would never naturally seem to have negative connotations without the suffix.

Just my 2c

Well, to expand on your point, the -cide suffix is actually rooted in Latin. So, even us, non-native English speakers would sooner recognize that word as opposed to other words.

That said, the term genode is familiar to me, so I did not get the negative vibes.

They just read it too fast and it's the closest real word geno(ci)de