Reminder for those replying.
As for the bans, not only yours but the other involved, glad to clear it up since people seem to be spreading misinformation as to why they were banned and what exactly took place.
There seems to be some prevailing narrative that it was a 'friend server' or 'a stock exchange market' and that people were unfairly banned, or banned even though they never typed a message.
This was the entire server, a server very specifically created and dedicated to circumventing the gameplay loop and the very well established discord and metagame rules.
A discord that is outside the permitted discords list which is being used to organize deals which should be done in-game does constitute a rulebreak even if the user had no messages in the discord they still are very clearly involved and intend to use it for purposes outside what is permitted. This was populated by players who have hundreds of hours in-game and definitely know better, so all things considered the bans are not exactly unreasonable or insane and if anything serve as a reminder that yes the rules matter and yes your decisions matter, if there's an active rulebreak occurring you should be reporting it instead of silently benefitting from your involvement.
What is the takeaway here? Any and all discords that exist for the express purpose of diverge related activities, communication, trading, etc are not permitted only the official faction discords are approved, you risk being punished for being involved with metagame.
Can a friend discord get you banned? No, hanging out in a separate discord with your friends that is in no way shape or form related to Diverge will not get you banned. Of course if you use that friend discord to then metagame or trade for Diverge related purposes you do open yourself up to administrative action.