It echoes Honeckers DDR. Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions. Some of it due to personal revenge, some of it to provide cover for their own shortcomings, some true believers.
Honecker did it for power and oppression. These people gleefully enlist voluntarily, attacking enemy and friends and each other to prove who the better dehumanized human is. Goddamit, it’s sad.
Does this happen often on Twitter?
Literally every example I've ever read about on Twitter is one of the following:
1. some poster completely unknown to the person in question-- either revealing content of old Tweets or aggressively responding to a recent utterance. Then that goes viral.
2. some victim of assault makes an accusation as a last ditch effort to stop a monster from continuing to assault victims.
I know plenty of examples of Facebook's instigation algo ripping at the seams of otherwise close-knit communities. But those are cases of a nasty divorce spilling out into public posts, or a political disagreement suddenly turning into, "Someone should burn so-and-so's house down!" Weird shit.
I've never witnessed any people who are friends or neighbors with each other attempt police each other's minor transgressions on Twitter.
But even when the first finder is a stranger, it's the people you know who have to do the damage. Some Twitter mob gets after your company to fire you. Only works if your boss, i.e. someone you know, folds to the mob. So in the end it's always friends and neighbors turning on each other.
Neighbors denouncing their black, Mexican, LGBTQ what have you neighbors. Then other neighbors denouncing the denouncers - this latter part seems to be where you start having a problem with it.
Incidentally, the US government surveils its citizen's phone calls etc. far more than the DDR under Honecker ever did.