For a website that clearly depends on being popular for having any hope at monetizing, a 30% traffic hit is huge and indication that the ban is a death sentence

For a website that clearly depends on being popular for having any hope at monetizing, a 30% traffic hit is huge and indication that the ban is a death sentence. People made similar remarks as yours when Google+ imposed the real name policy. Google+ is now dead. HN tends to think of all sorts of technical or marketing reasons for why platforms live or die, however the best reasons for why social platforms live or die are always social ones.