Every time someone is reported, that means someone has to look over it, even at least just read it to determine if it's worth looking into.

The option to mitigate the need to report reduces the workload for those people, and does nothing to harm new players. If someone chooses to hide themselves from player search, they probably aren't someone to ask help from.

This option has nothing to do with tells and people can already opt to turn off the tell chime and filter tells out altogether, so the option to hide from player search isnt going to exacerbate that particular issue.