I can totally see this sort of thing happening. Back in my Usenet days, a couple of people were banned from one fan and fanfic forum supposedly for intensely flaming one of the mods over shipping preferences. But IIRC the mod who did the banning was turfed out when the other mods realized the now-ex-mod went to high school with the people who were banned. There was gossip behind the scenes that the ex-mod had been a popular kid at school who was worried the others would blab her "shameful secret" that she was a fanfic writer on the internet but IDK how true it all was.