I believe that that “cancel culture” is really just “consequence culture.” At one point users could hold powerful entities to account. The flattening of the public sphere twitter provided was a feature.

Absolutely there have been people who got targeted who did not deserve it - regular folks who posted a shit take that caught the mobs attention. But I think one of the motivations for Elon acquiring twitter and threads’ non-chronological feed is to clamp down on this kind of of organizing and centralize power.

As for hate speech, the problem that is that any solution at scale means AI and that reveals the biases of those who wrote it. These solutions can’t serve everyone.

And outrage fuels engagement - these companies are incentived to allow that.

So basically I think large networks can’t solve the problem. What’s needed is a decentralized approach with small interoperable communities vetting their members. Even if you get a hate filled instance it can be locked off so it can’t spread. Hate-motivated jerks have always existed, they just had no real access to the discourse until the internet. I really think the answer is the fediverse of tomorrow - if we make it that far.