If I could wager a guess, it sounds like the startup was in the business of scraping Amazon.
To the parent, please do not try to lure info out of people it is just not cool online or in real life when people obviously are being generic for a reason.
I think you have a valid general question (and you'll note I said "appropriate kind, IMHO" at the top of the original comment, acknowledging others might disagree that it was appropriate), but I'd like to contrast two distinct situations:
* A collegial forum, where people might go to share information, sometimes with discretion about what can and can't be said (or just comfort levels).
* A large corporation that was profiting off of illegal businesses (e.g., contract-violating, IP-violating, defrauding buyers, possibly fencing), and we wanted to gather evidence of that on behalf of some of the harmed parties, to try to stop it. And we did that in a technologically gentle, non-disruptive way. And (as I mentioned in the original comment) we had a conscious policy to immediately cease if we were ever told to.
They amount to the same thing as stating "we don't like if you do X and we'll probably ban you" but written in legalese so people take it more seriously.
Get the advice of an actual lawyer before relying on this of course.