You haven’t spent much time on IRC/forums, have you? Gatekeeping undesirables was and still is a common practice in those circles, one that keeps the community

You haven’t spent much time on IRC/forums, have you? Gatekeeping undesirables was and still is a common practice in those circles, one that keeps the community safe from external activists that wish to corrupt it. This is not “abusing mod powers”, this is cleaning bad actors from the community. Even HackerNews has methods in place to mitigate bad actors, although they’re far more hidden and frankly more dangerous than simply being told one is unwelcome.