It is pretty passive-aggressive. An outright ban would get the point across, rather than this weird toying with people that we see in the form of hellbanning.
It's supposed to be passive aggressive. That's the point. It's not supposed to get any point across. Hell-banning is a form of "do not feed the trolls".
Some people enjoy making useless posts. They can continue making useless posts. Just with hellbanning most people no longer see those useless posts.
Some people are accidentally hellbanned. It sucks for those people. But they can sometimes become unbanned, or they can start a new account.
