We used to have a balance of power between the huge megaplatforms: they were the gatekeepers, but the worst punishment they could impose was forcing you to make a new account. Because they couldn't reliably tell us apart.

This got nuked by the combination of two things:

1. Really good facial recognition

2. Everybody owning a bootloader-locked device with a front-facing camera (so you can't splice in FaceFusion to defeat #1).

This is what made permabans possible. And it has upset the delicate balance that made things tolerable previously.