Ego issues change profoundly when the communications are tone-deaf/plain-text and there are no eyes looking back at you.

I agree, though I would re-word that to

Communication issues change profoundly when the communications are monotonic words and are read without the reader benefiting from seeing the body langauge/facial expressions of the writer/speaker. They therefore tend to add the meter and tone in their minds-ear as they read.

The minds-ear is subject to the same rose-tinting/brown-staining as the minds-eye, and "the good ol' days". In particular, it carries the assumptions, perceptions, hopes and fears--and yes, ego--of the reader, regardless of what the writer thought they were writing.

One of the problems with online communities like this is that they encourage a degree of informality and the incorporation of the partisipant's humour and other personality traits into the communications. These are extremely difficult to convey with any accuracy, even by those rare, gifted wordsmiths, much less by your average non-language graduate.

Once some level of informality has become the community norm, even attempts to formalise communications in order alleviate misunderstandings can backfire in the perception of it by the reader.