alt Hacker NewsThe real offence is posting without being a bot. The subreddit has to look a certain way, idk what they have in mind but always something, they use bots to make it look that way, you can also post if you contribute to the project but if you ever go against their unstated wishes, then bam!
All of this existed before, all the way back to BBS culture (minus the bots mostly). What Reddit did was hyperscale it. People are tribal and they enforce adherence to their chosen tribe's ways. It's pretty depressing to look back and see that one of the quickest paths to three commas was to monetize it.