Power in early online communities came down to two things - the actual moderators and the self appointed social moderators. Often the actual moderators were part of the social community so you had this cross over.
As my university lecturer taught me about traditional censorship - who censors the censors and what happens if they have very different ideas about right and wrong to you? He made the following point (this was 1997) to the effect of "Im sure many of you would like to ban lots of things such as the Daily Mail cos you are young and leftie and don't like certain things but sometimes you need to appreciate that you need right wing voices and the opinions of people like this chain smoker and one day you might really need the Daily Mail". His speciality was politics and propaganda...
But online we had all these communities growing up where the moderators had this huge amount of power and social status. If your face didn't fit it was easier to drive you off a site or simply be banned from it. And then you had crowds of suck ups around the moderators (often looking to become mods themselves).
Power struggles were common. You had to learn to navigate saying things in a certain way and not upsetting certain people.
It was fine if you had moderators who were patient and tolerant. But some, went power crazed and there'd be clear abuses of power. It was informal and totally unregulated. No one was looking at who the moderators were.
Now we have paid moderation for most of the big social media sites which tends to separate members and users and there's much clearer and formalised community rules which are generally written down. But these paid jobs are also naturally going to attract certain types of people to them. And it's overwhelmingly not women. And there's absolutely no transparency on this.
This is essentially the thing that governments across the world still haven't got to grips with - we've only just had the Online Harms Act in 2023. And this really doesn't even start to touch the sides. Partly because these communities are international so laws in one country might mean that someone is beyond the the jurisdictions of another.
One woman I know (and still very occasionally talk to) ended up with a situation where someone she was in an online relationship he turned really nasty saying all sorts about her to the whole community. He harassed her online, contacted her family and her employer in the process. She went to the police but because this person was in Canada there was fuck all they could do. He was really abusive and aggressive. This was what 2005ish if I recall correctly. How much further have we moved with this kind of stuff?
Everyone seems to suggest this type of shit is much more recent than it actually is. The amount of inactivity politically on this is shocking. We think it's new to teens now. It's just not. It's just happening on a massive scale now and we haven't remotely got our heads around it.
And it always comes back to this when it comes to MN because you have a community with moderation and moderators which is isn't the same as others and this isn't liked. The moderators are mainly female for starters.
It is COMPLETELY relevant to what's happening to girls at school because it's about gatekeepers, decision makers and social pressures. None of whom are centring the interests of girls - it's not considering the sexualisation of girls, it's not considering rising sexism and conformity online, it's not considering the impact of echo chambers, it's not considering the lack of power in online communication for women and then there's the dominance of men in LGBT charities and the sidelining and ostracisation of lesbian voices. It is not a coincidence it is happening at the same time.