IMO we've had a version of this fork for several years now, though it was more at the social layer. I've imagined it as a social super-structure of the internet, basically a bubble that represents "society". Microversions of it have existed since the 90's but really came to fruition with the rise of social media (myspace, facebook, twitter, etc). I don't think it's a coincidence that "cancel culture" came soon after, because once you have a virtualized public sphere, it's now a matter of deciding who/what belongs.