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At the risk of tautology, the audience did, by the bit where they're doing it, and anyone's taking them seriously. I could go through the whole list of how moderators were picked up til 2012ish, but I don't think anyone cares, I don't know if it's changed since, and it's just a pretty shallow duct-tape patch on the underlying will to power. The RPGnet moderators run, for all meaningful purposes, the forum. (You can appeal to the admins, but they usually don't even bother to respond; from the rare times I've heard of them doing so, they just fob it off to the moderators.) There's nothing special about this compared to the "fuck Trump and his supporters" rule, "fuck ICE" rule, the "fuck 'nazis'" rule, or even a decade ago when it actually was a "fuck Nazis" rule, just because they call some of them about 'human rights' and some of them about not protecting awful people. It's just a norm they've set up.
In less formal relationships, the baton pass of the mandate of heaven is less obvious. But it still exists; you give people this power by interacting with them in ways where this power can be used. It's not some deep revelation about universal laws, it's just drawing lines with chalk.
And, to be fair and to steelman, that's how those sort of rules work. Barring some pretty extreme cults, state-run schools, or literal jails (badum-tish), you don't actually have some magical force requiring you to treat people seriously, or for them to treat you seriously. If someone draws lines by chalk, you either obey them, or you give them reason to fuck off.
To be somewhat less charitable, it being within one's power doesn't make it harmless. It's not hard to see what this has done to public discussion.
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