You're thinking of individuals. The point is that, even if the "old elite" have the power to just say "Ban that newcomer" and the newcomer gets banned, the "old

You're thinking of individuals. The point is that, even if the "old elite" have the power to just say "Ban that newcomer" and the newcomer gets banned, the "old elite" do not scale while the influx of newcomers certainly can. One, two, three, even 20 bad actors can be dealt with by a small group of community gardeners. But thousands of bad actors are just on a totally different scale and cannot be dealt with in the same way. This is similar to the situation of event security guards. They individually hold more power than any member of the crowd, but if the crowd collectively decides to rush the stage, they can't really stop it from happening because it is physically impossible for 50 people to overpower 10000.