Fediverse

Trollfare between popular instances leads to irl confrontations and wild accusations spread across media. Throwing illegal content up onto adversarial instances in community raids becomes a standard way of "swatting" that instance and getting it taken down and posted across the news. Governments start taking over major instances and using it to disseminate fake news and propaganda leading to further polarization and confrontation. Governments set up their own instances with communities for various branches of government. Eventually joining any federated instance requires a government federation account, and your citizenship status dictates where and to what extent you're allowed to participate. Spies are sent into various instances to try and gain political power and influence. Corporations buy up all the biggest instances and eventually the software it runs on. All data is collected and sold.