What the right calls "cancel culture" is the product of 25 years of tech companies removing any and all ways for users to moderate their environment.
On IRC I can select whose messages I see. I've got ignore. I can throw people out of my rooms with /kick and I can ban them long term with /ban. All rooms I'm in are rooms I've selected myself to be in, so rooms have regulars that know each other. If a banned user returns, it's easy to ban them again, or ban by IP, etc.
Tech companies removed this power from users. I can't say “hey, I only want to see tweets from these people, only they should be able to interact with my tweets, etc.” Because if I could, I could also just ban advertisers from my circles.
If I want to avoid interacting with someone on Twitter, not even blocking the user works. And even if I did block the user, my friends have to repeat it, there's no way of throwing a user out of your entire friend circle.
So the only option available is petitioning Twitter to remove the user from the entire platform. So of course that's what people do.
The methods you give users define their social interactions. Reddit has less of an issue with this because Subreddit mods can rule however they like. But in return, Subreddits have a reputation of being run by power hungry autocrats just like IRC rooms had.
You can 100% mute and block people on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, most main line social media platforms. Hell you can even mute keywords on Twitter and never have to deal with seeing another tweet about Will Smith slapping someone.
Should one user be able to decide if another user should be expelled from a platform? That leads to a lot of sticky problems, so no, they shouldn't have that power. Should a user be banned if they violate the terms of the platform (roughly what mods on IRC would do when a user was banned)?
Yes. Yes they should. And they do. It's a liability for platforms to not enforce their own rules.
The issue is that with twitter, you can only ban a user from interacting with you, or from interacting with the entire platform.
Traditionally, there used to be something in between: Ban someone from your small sub-community.
And moderators on most social media platforms only take action if they have to, preferring to stay inactive, while in most social circles people would proactively make sure a new member is a good fit.
Currently, people share block lists to accomplish the same. On Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups, IRC channels or even BBS you also had some users with the ability to throw trolls out.
On Twitter, there’s nothing like this. There’s no way for someone to make a group, post content only to that group, and add/remove users to/from the group.
For millennia, most human conversation happened in such groups. Our social mechanisms haven’t changed quickly enough to hold pace with the technological mechanisms of posting an opinion and having literal billions of potential readers – and commenters.
On IRC I can select whose messages I see. I've got ignore. I can throw people out of my rooms with /kick and I can ban them long term with /ban. All rooms I'm in are rooms I've selected myself to be in, so rooms have regulars that know each other. If a banned user returns, it's easy to ban them again, or ban by IP, etc.
Tech companies removed this power from users. I can't say “hey, I only want to see tweets from these people, only they should be able to interact with my tweets, etc.” Because if I could, I could also just ban advertisers from my circles.
If I want to avoid interacting with someone on Twitter, not even blocking the user works. And even if I did block the user, my friends have to repeat it, there's no way of throwing a user out of your entire friend circle.
So the only option available is petitioning Twitter to remove the user from the entire platform. So of course that's what people do.
The methods you give users define their social interactions. Reddit has less of an issue with this because Subreddit mods can rule however they like. But in return, Subreddits have a reputation of being run by power hungry autocrats just like IRC rooms had.