What was up with that?
It happened to me yesterday (Thu am).
This has come up before,
I don’t have any other information than that though.
Is the “read only” note exactly what you would get if you were banned? Or do banned posters get notified in some other way? Not good for the blood pressure.
Banned posters get a different message, though I’m not sure what the wording is.
Banned users get the message “Account suspended until (date): (reason)”
Example:
It’s the same message for short term suspensions as well as long term bans. In Discourse a ban is just a permanent suspension (the software says permanent but then it puts in a date that is 1,000 years in the future). vBulletin would put you in a different user group if you were banned or suspended. Discourse just doesn’t allow you to log in.
FYI, BannyMcBanface is a test account we use to train new mods. He gets warned and suspended a lot. 
Now I’m curious what is the longest anyone has got away with having a sock account (and still been caught, obv). Or is that classified information?
I was concerned because “read only” is pretty absolute. Even clicking “contact us” down in the Dark Space eventually leads to a denial intercept.
I do know that a banned poster can interact with the site, because I was once range-banned until I changed my IP.