Literally noone could have seen this coming. /s
edit: XCabbage better explains what I was trying to say. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21191253
That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.
'Cancel culture' may not be censorship in its technical definition, but isn't that effectively what it's achieving? A comedian, for example, tweets some half-baked remark that some (loud minority) find offensive. Of course, they do respond to this negatively but the media also runs with it and this group of loud people call for the cancellation of shows, appearances, and sometimes even call for the firing of the person.
You are correct in that this person, even after all of this, has outlets and ways to practice their freedom of speech - but it's essentially sending other people a not-so-subtle sign that there are certain things they simply shouldn't say, lest they would like a twitter mob aimed at them.
Occasionally, older public remarks are even dug up by journalists and used to smear the character of those people who made the remarks today. There needs to be some form of restitution, but one currently does not seem to be well defined.
Moreover, my above comment is grayed out right now as some people downvote it. Let's all think about that irony for a moment.
Censorship is the simple act of not allowing someone to say something.
Companies censor all the time. Movie studios. Recording companies.
I've noticed this trend with people, they identify something as negative, in this case censorship, and then they try and contort definitions to excuse their involvement in it. Because that's a bad thing and they're good people and good people don't do bad things.
I'm going to come in with a hot take: censorship isn't inherently bad. It just is. Censorship can be used to focus discussion on what's important. To keep garbage out of discourse. Those are good uses of it. Yes, it can be used to simply silence dissent. That is a bad use. But just because it can be used in a bad way doesn't make it bad itself.
How do you figure that cancel culture isn't defacto censorship? Deplatforming somebody because you don't agree with their viewpoints is absolutely censorship in a moral sense.
Calling people "childish" who don't agree with you is a weasel tactic. Those tactics should invalidate the whole argument, but for some reason they don't. Make the argument without the weasel tactics if you want people to listen.