I mean sure. But the potential of legal cases will have some effect, not immediately but in the longterm establishing "I can get sued for the way I behave online as a public figure" will have a significant impact on behaviour online of those in office.

I stress the fact that this will only occur if they do in fact get sued successfully and it becomes well established. If they fail to get it to happen and succeed then it will fail to have impact.

I think the most important thing to take note of here is that there are some actively pursuing this. They view it as dangerous.

Imagine if the whole ruling class were identifiable online and you could discern the working class from the top 1% online. Same effect would occur.