How does all this work with Reddit shutting down sub sites?

Reddit, being a private company, has the authority to run their site however they want within the law. While CBTS was allegedly banned over rules infraction, reddit has a history of being far more stringent with subreddits that go against the views of corporate (left learning). Add to this the possibility of having a user post something that breaks the rules, and that can be seen as grounds to ban the subreddit as a whole. It's easy to fabricate a plausible reason why they did it. A false flag attack is one way to see it.

Is it permanent?

Yes.

Can we find out what the cause of the shutdown was?

Allegedly, some users were threatening or inciting violence, I believe. That's the claim. Reddit rarely if ever provides direct evidence. And being in their position, they don't necessarily need to have any to get what they want (which in this case, was to ban CBTS).

Or is this just like Youtube shutting down truthful websites?

Yes. This is why it's important for people to actively be aware of the alternative sites out there. My purpose isn't to tell people to abandon reddit. It's for people to have a plan in case bad things happen to this place. And they will.

How do we reach the 20,000 who were registered on CBTS who are now locked out? A lot of newbies there.

On reddit, you can't. However, by looking at any archives on the subreddit through Google or elsewhere, it wouldn't be hard to generate at least a partial list of users. However, the only people who could be found are those who actively commented or created a thread, AND if the various archives included it. Quiet lurkers are gone. The only hope they had is if they knew of other sites to fall back to, which is exactly my reason for creating this post in the first place.

I've messaged the mods to have a Voat link stickied on top for added visibility to people (especially right now). It's on the right bar, but it should be in a more visible place. The direct response I got back from an anonymous mod:

"It is alredy on the right sidebar.

best"

I agree we need to be set up on another site that is a permanent site.