I don't think the scraping is the full reason. I was not on lemmy/kbin or any other part of the fediverse and I still got this random permaban, in fact it happened before the pricing changes were announced on May 31st.
Also, my username there is different to what I'm using on the fediverse.
Prior to being permabanned I also never used the API for anything. Only used it for the scripts to wipe my account clean (so being permabanned doesn't typically prevent one from creating the API tokens or actually using the API, it seems).
Well that rules out (most) of the malicious possibilities. What we're left with is probably either Hanlon's razer, or something you commented about spez.
If it's the latter, the four accounts I nuked are still alive.
Sadly, it wasn't the later. I never mentioned spez and didn't even know what the CEO's name or username was until the blackouts (i.e. after i got permabanned).
VPN? They have this half-baked user "reliability" rating system that they claim "identifies known alts".
Which is marketingspeak for "we log ips," I think. If they did that as poorly as everything else, it's possible they think you're the last guy to use that vpn before you.