When a website is below a certain size, it's likely that they don't think it's worth the resources required to even determine whether they're abusing visitors.

When a website is below a certain size, it's likely that they don't think it's worth the resources required to even determine whether they're abusing visitors. It's not "we're abusing people so we're banning the people it's illegal to abuse", it's "we don't know if what we're doing falls under the definition of what's considered abuse, and the people it's illegal to abuse are not part of our market, so this is the shortest-path to guaranteeing we don't accidentally do anything illegal". If it were some very large international website, it could more reasonably considered an admission of guilt, but for a small regional newspaper I don't think it is.