Bullcrap.
It would be one thing if the link requests were seen to be effective, but how many times have you seen someone replying with a link before the banhammer comes down? (A PM's link is invisible to the group and wouldn't prove the requests were effective).
What is happening is that people are using their common sense: When people first come to a site, many of them assume the normal set of rules - don't flame, don't harass, etc. For 95% of the sites, that's going to keep you out of trouble.
What we have here is a rule that for better or worse is so far outside the norm that anyone who doesn't studiously read the rules looking for a "gotcha" is going to get nailed. F95 doesn't ban asking for links, Hongfire doesn't... or at least didn't when it was alive, nor does any other site I can think of.
So of course we are going to have a constant stream of <10 post-ers getting hammered - P.T. Barnum said there's a sucker born every minute and the corollary is that a newbie is born every second.
The mods have decided that playing whack-a-newbie is more acceptable to them then allowing people to ask for links would be, and it's their right to make that call. But let's not assume a conspiracy of throwaway accounts when simple ignorance would do for an explanation.