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I was banned from r/hotsauce because I posted a coupon-code for a brand I was interested in trying. They were trying to sell stock to help mitigate the downfall of the COVID-19. The mod said I was an advertising shill and needed to be purged... As if people posting their collections all day didn't count as advertising.

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A lot of subreddits end up being snakes telling their tail how it's the best tail. A lot of those can turn into ads as people start making whatever brands to get in on the circle jerk. Some subreddits I suspect go further and have companies working with moderators to do very potent marketing without anyone drawing attention to it. /r/mechanicalkeyboards, /r/gadgets, etc, the list goes on.

And my desperate attempts to become unbanned was met with paranoid skepticism and unfounded rebuttals. I had literally only posted one other time, showing off a meager 10 bottle collection. And somehow trying to help not only the community by sharing a discount code, not only starting a discussion about the aforementioned sauces, but also helping the struggling company. I didn't really see a problem with it. The community like the post and engaged, but somehow I was a first-offence marketing shill worth banning for life.

Not sure what i'm missing here. You clearly did not read the subreddit rules before posting. However the fact that you have no recourse after being banned other than debating a mod, that's a clear issue.

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