All those moral panics in the past were so embarrassing and obviously silly in retrospect, and I feel for all the innocent people who were attacked and ostracized.
It's a good thing that the moral panics we have right now are clearly righteous and accurate, and the people being attacked and ostracized unquestionably deserve it.
I'm not sure about your age or background... but having lived through "D&D or Heavy Metal Music == Satanism" moral panic myself, I'm not sure that such a phenomenon is even possible in an Internet-enabled world.
If you were into any kind of nerd subculture, or really just any subculture to begin with, then it's really hard to describe the sense of social isolation that you would have felt prior to online communities (especially if you didn't live in a major city).
The Internet has ushered in an era of social fragmentation, but before then there an immense pressure toward social cohesion and conformity. Today, no matter what you're into, there's a subreddit and 1,000 other websites dedicated to that. There is community, social connection. Conventions and other gatherings emerge from that.
Back in the 80's, there was just... nothing. You were a freak, and completely socially isolated, just for being into non-pop musical genres... or having hobbies and interests other than those deemed mainstream (e.g. sports, hunting and fishing, etc).
Yes, there are still moral crusaders today. There are still assholes in Kentucky that don't want to give marriage licenses to gay people, and so on. I don't mean to make light of that. But it's just... not... the... same... as it was a generation ago, when any deviation from the norm placed you in complete social isolation without even an online escape.
That isolation was also a blanket of security. If you exhibit any attributes that today's moral panic is against, you could find yourself facing down a horde of harassers. They'll find all your friends and family on Facebook and try to get them to turn against you. They'll look up your employer online and tell them you're sexist or that you're sharing child pornography online. If you're in university, they'll convince the school to expel or otherwise ostracize you.
There are a lot of similarities between this generation of moral panic and the past, but the differences are not at all an improvement.
Ehh... I won't argue that the Internet hasn't opened up the door for new modes of harassment. However, the "cyberbully", "stalker", or "brigade" phenomenons are a totally different animal from a moral panic. Maybe they're even worse, but they're not the same.
Brigades and harassment can be expressions of a moral panic.
In the 80's, moral panics led people to write leaflets, call their senator, and push their local TV station to cover it. Today, technology lets the people caught up in a moral panic directly interact with the people they see as the cause of their panic. It's not surprising that we see brigades and harassment on those new front lines.
Of course, that doesn't tell us that every antagonistic movement is a moral panic. But certainly the moral panics, if large enough, will have unpleasant aspects. That's just the cost of allowing easy direct interaction between anyone at any time.
Growing up, I was probably the member of our social group from the most "panicked" home. I am more tempered in my ideas now, but I suppose I still lean that way myself, at least compared to most of the opinions here. However, I'm sorry if I said or did anything rude to those on the other side of the fence back in the day. I am also sorry if I just made this weird, but I did that a lot growing up as well.
We as a society have no ability to recognize and arrest a moral panic while it's in progress. At best, the people who point out that it's a moral panic get lumped in with the targets of the moral panic and marginalized.
In fifteen years when we've moved on to panicking about, I dunno, artificial intelligences or space colonization or whatever ("Sixteen Reasons Why Moving To The Moon Is Racist") we'll all look back on 2016 and smugly shake our heads at those ignorant, benighted simpletons and how they freaked out over the most minor things.
It's a good thing that the moral panics we have right now are clearly righteous and accurate, and the people being attacked and ostracized unquestionably deserve it.