So I'm on Tumblr right. On Tumblr there's a large segment that is dedicated to call out culture, which is where they'll harass people online for having views they seem immoral--in some cases they'll look up someone's personal information, post it publicly, and either encourage people to be nasty or contact said person's workplace to tell them to fire said person. That's called doxxing, and it's illegal.
I've not been targeted directly, though I once attracted the attention of the call out community when they messaged me telling me to avoid someone because "they're a Nazi" and I basically told them to find something better to do than spread rumors about people that may or may not be true. So they made a post mentioning me, and that was scary because I had no idea if they planned for me to be their next bullying target or whatever. Their post about me made special mention of me being "an evangelical Christian", in a way that you could tell they didn't think highly of that.
Aside from that, there used to be a member on another site that would come on my profile and just dump an angry tirade on me, y'know. Every few months. And me being me, instead of ignoring them I was like "maybe they just misunderstand me and I can alleviate that by explaining". Just made things worse.
I don't think they're a bad person though, just they were hurt and since I was part of the group they felt hurt them they refused to give me the benefit of a doubt.
I don't think I would call that persecution, but people are definitely more aggressive about particular topics and they feel justified and empowered to act that way now than in the past.
What I would worry about is the Tumblr mentality and call out culture spreading. They don't only target Christians, but Christians are definitely one of the groups on their crap list if they hold certain views. If you get a large group of people who think it's okay to bully others and they have a community that encourages and empowers that behavior, that's not good for anybody.