I agree with you about the product placement stuff, and I despise the submarine shills. But that's the thing: that's rejecting the submission -- and banning the user -- on their content having failed to meet the forums standards, not simply the fact of their profile linking their OF, as the OP was referring to. That's a whole different league from "hey, here are some cool rabbits" and oh, if you look at their profile, you can find their OF page. (The OF friend in question was immediately banned for having a reddit account whose profile links OF even despite the mod accepting that it's otherwise a valid submission.)
I'm make the same challenge to you that the other respondent ignored: how should people ethically self-promote, if not that?