While the ban and rule are stupid beyond belief, I just want to make a note that Kevin is now unbanned and is asking people NOT to harass the mods
While not all moderators behave selfishly or egotistically, a large enough number of them do such that the experience at scale sucks.
You don't know what the rules of each individual subreddit are, and you can easily find yourself banned for completely harmless behavior. This is at odds with Reddit's recent growth strategy of funneling people into new subreddits from the main feed. Often times you may not even know what subreddit you're in, yet the mods still expect you to read their rules before commenting.
I was shadow banned from my home city for commenting on crime once. I never got a reason or justification. Now I can't exchange concert tickets or participate in local discussion. It feels like a crime against my person.
I've had moderators ban me for winning a friendly argument they weren't even involved in.
I've even been banned for posting in an unrelated subreddit: there's a moderation bot that will check your post history and automatically ban you. It's funny because I don't share the ideology of the subreddit they flagged me for posting in.
All of this is a shining example of why freedom of speech is so important, and why moderation should be an individual choice where users can apply their own filters and blocking.
Reddit mods get in early and by that merit alone are entitled to power. It doesn't make sense anymore.
This is against the mod rules and deserves reporting.
I think that most power structures are "an experiment in autocratic dictatorship". Most include normal people in some way to some extent, but at the end of the day, there is a few who say what's going on, and then that's what's going on.
Therefore I don't think that anyone needs to take this so seriously. But it might be worth keeping in mind that the opposite is not true either. No matter how friendly a Reddit sub is, it's the mods who decide what and who stays. Same with websites: while many act like a public space, everything is up to the private host actually.