Hey so in case you're like me and wondered: Can you ban members without them being in the server?
The answer is yes, you absolutely can! It'll look like this - the numbers you paste will be what's "banned"
However my sibling tried this in her servers and found that One of them was NOT a string of numbers, like so:
And for clarity it isn't a difference in user or device, this is what she got elsewhere:
So if you ban these numbers and the message shows the actual username? Pretty sure that means they were in there.
Very unpleasant way to check the veracity of this post but hopefully this is a helpful tip for anyone who was concerned - my sib would have No Reason to add these in herself and didn't have any clue it was in there.
Personally, I'd say even if you are still worried about misinfo/fearmongering/etc from this post, think of it this way - worst case scenario is you're banning a bot you'll never use or need. Not a person, a bot. There's no real damage done playing it safe and running the ban commands through, aside from maybe losing some time doing so.
Best of luck everyone.