The thing about cancel culture..

The really fundamentally sad thing about so many so-called libertarians viewing cancel culture and mobs silencing people with controversial views as a sort of cultural alternative to government censorship is that, in a way, cancel culture is worse.

I support no censorship. If anything, I don't think that we've upheld the First Amendment well enough. But, at least with state censorship, the censors are elected or, at least, appointed in most Western democracies. At least they need to go through a process of passing laws. I'm damned opposed to any and all of those abridgements of free speech throughout Europe and Canada. I've risked a lot and lost several friends by defending the most despicable speech that's been attacked. Don't get me wrong for a second, I'm not giving a pass to censorship by the state.

But, cancel culture and mob censorship has zero accountability. The censors aren't elected. The censors don't need to go through a process of passing laws. If anything, they've appointed themselves as the censors. There's no Democratic accountability with this tactic. There's little recourse.

This isn't a libertarian compatible form of censorship. It's just censorship.

Devil's advocate: isn't cancel culture the flip side of allowing "hate speech?" That is, if people have the right to speak their minds on any topic, don't other people have the right to disagree?

Cancel culture is an extension of that disagreement. Boycotting those with whom you disagree is a combination of the rights of free speech and free association.

For example:

We love Harry Potter, but the author says problematic things. Let's stop reading her books, and we'll tell the publishers that we're not buying anything she writes ever again.
Is cancel culture despicable simply because social media has allowed people to organize boycotts better?