One of the things that changed on Birdsite around 2010-12 was the formation of cliques.
These were structures of taste-makers and famous people which once formed tended to start crusading. It's the dominant culture today, and I've already seen it here.
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I'm talking about journalists using Twitter as a symbiotic source both for content and for networking. Buzzfeed was probably the best example.
A symptom of this are changes in moderation that seem to have come from *somewhere* when what has actually happened is a class hierarchy has formed. This is not great for small communities.