Another common problem with communities rife with gossip, shit talking, and lashon hara is that once you come to assume everyone is talking about everyone behind each other's backs, it becomes natural to be paranoid any time your friends have other friends who you aren't on good terms with.
If you have a falling out with a friend and your friends don't unilaterally choose you over the other person, they come to feel "dangerous" as though their sheer proximity to someone who doesn't like you makes them a threat.
The fear is that of what I'm calling Friendship Espionage the fear that your friend is talking shit about you behind your back with their other friends. That their presence in your spaces is so they can collect dirt on you and shit talk you to your other friends so that slowly everyone will freeze you out and the social territory will be claimed by the person you don't like. Or worse, a fear that your shared friend is casing you, building up a portfolio of nasty information about you to release at once as a call out post or whisper network smear to completely destroy you.
It's an incredibly toxic and unhealthy mindset and it forces people to choose between close friends. Something I learned as a kid is "if someone makes you choose, they've already chosen for you" which is to say cliques that don't like you socializing outside the clique are best to leave rather than choose them when they make you choose. I've seen long deep important friendships ended because someone felt they had to "protect themselves" from someone who refused to take sides in a petty falling out.
Consider an alternative social dynamic. In a community where purely recreational shit talking, gossip, and lashon hora are frowned upon, you can assume that your friends do not talk shit about you behind your back and if they had a problem with you worth talking about they'd talk to you about it. If you assume your friends aren't talking about you with the person you don't like, then Friendship Espionage becomes nonsensical to assume and there's nothing that could possibly be dangerous about your friends having friends you aren't friends with. There's no narrative to control because you are simply vibing separately from each other and aren't trying to push each other out of your shared spaces. And since there's nothing dangerous about it, you aren't forcing friends to choose when you have a conflict. And if every conflict doesn't have to result in social circles schisming as people choose sides, then conflicts become much less inherently high stakes for everyone, making it easier to work through them with a level head, because nobody feels like they're fighting to keep all of their shared friends.
Friendship Espionage is an absurd thing to fear, but I'm sure when you think about it you can think of many times when you saw people, or yourself, fear good friends as dangerous by proximity to people they have beef with. There's nothing dangerous about this unless you're assuming friendship espionage is happening. And if your community norms are such that you really think that's something people would do, you must realize how toxic your community norms have become.
Just yet another reason why our ancestors like the chofetz chaim passed down the wisdom to be sparing with gossip and exercise much intent and purpose when when we speak ill of others. There are times we have to speak of people behind their backs, but if we're not careful with it as a practice, if it becomes common and recreational to a point of being expected, your community will rot at the core, infested with paranoia and strife.