Yes, this very much is caused by the people independent from where they interact, but their convictions and beliefs then create a group dynamic that reinforces the ‘purist’ behavior which is then driven to become more extreme. On a small to medium-size forum with good moderators it is relatively easy to break these spirals before they become really detrimental to the community. But on the large platforms they are hard to keep in check, and there are also communities where the moderators are part of the spiral themselves, and then start to act elsewhere on the web.
On the fediverse you see these dynamics too sometimes. Here there are 1,000’s of servers - each with their own rules - connected together (there are good moderation tools, see Decentralized social networks vs. The trolls video). There are some extreme activist groups that attack free software projects where not all tools used are also free software themself. I.e. the purity must be absolute. They even go this far that when you boost (i.e. retweet) posts about these projects, they’ll come on your thread to say stuff like “Did you know that this project you just promoted [wasn’t pure to our standards]?”. Then if you do not amend, in their eyes you committed a cardinal sin. There also have been blocklists of people that should be canceled.
A perfect example of FOSS attacking FOSS, an infighting that weakens the cause of free software rather than strengthen it. Luckily these folks are shunned within the community, and eventually the spiral dies out, or is moved to the fringes by collective fediverse moderation.
