Rich and privileged people have always been the main people concerned about the risk of having their reputation tarnished in a widespread way, if for no other reason than rich and privileged and the existence of a widespread reputation to tarnish ordinarily co-exist, so it seems like a weird thing to just recently notice.

The difference is that technology has taken infamy to a global scale, making available a global reserve of vicious, unchecked sadism to those who can figure out how to point the cannon at their desired target. The only thing left to do is to fight over control of the cannon.