I think you misread their response. It’d be similar to ask “How long does a timeout last” - it depends on the time affixed to the state - timeouts have no inherently defined length.
I think ban in the tech world was originally understood to be permanent - but in the real world ban has always had the flexibility to have an assigned term. As the internet has grown it seems that ban is gradually returning to being non-permanent though a lot of systems will still differentiate between a ban (permanent) and a suspension (temporary) - though, again, there are instances I’ve seen of “Account permanently Suspended.”
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Right. Often times when something is banned, it is usually banned “until further notice” hence permanent or indeterminate length, but not always. It’s the qualifier that will specify whether a ban is temporary or not.
The Prohibition Era was a time when alcohol was banned indefinitely, until it was repealed. Campfire bans generally are only during the season when the risk of fire is high or are disallowed during specific times of day, and those have been around for a while. Being grounded is a ban on going anywhere until a kid meets their parents’ wishes or after a certain time. Temporary parking restrictions for a special event or snow clearing have been around pre-internet and those are called parking bans. It’s not the ban itself that means permanent, even if there were a lot more uses of it meaning “until further notice”, than for a specific length. You could say that the usage of ban qualified with a specific time expiry is more common now than it did before, but I would argue it did exist in the past. Why that is, I could only guess.