I just ran across this excellent essay and thought it was one of the savviest things I've ever read on the topic. I'm linking you the full story as well as providing some highlights.

https://annamercury.medium.com/we-just-cant-quit-cancel-culture-5e877fc9bad5

"What we now call “cancel culture” is a modern version of ancient, enduring human practices of shaming and shunning. For millennia, groups of people have taken it upon themselves to publicly shame, shun or exile those who they feel have done wrong. This is nothing new.

“Cancel culture” is a way for the collective to exert power. Humans, being interdependent pack animals, are primed to fear shame and ostracism. Isolation from our group means our needs go unmet, so we’ll often do anything to fit in.

The problem with power hierarchies is that they curtail (or eradicate) mechanisms for feedback. Living systems include all kinds of power relationships, and their components limit and support one another in organic loops of feedback that impose consequences for bad decisions and encourage good ones.

But while cancel culture, like any culture, can get out of hand, what we call “cancelling” in and of itself is not a negative thing. It’s just an adaptation to a system that has curtailed or removed real opportunities for feedback. If we want to end cancel culture, we have to level the playing field and bring back that genuine feedback into our systems. We won’t stop cancelling people until we stop having entrenched social hierarchies, both materially and emotionally."