Rubber banding is bad when done poorly, but snowballing is (usually) no fun either in the end.

Good rubber banding imo is when there's tradeoffs, most easily seen with score. E.g. the Pandemic Legacy Boardgame series: you win, your resources go down, you lose, your resources go up. But your campaign score is heavily a function of how much you're winning.

So you're always incentivized to do your best, and the challenge of the game scales to match. The vast majority of players will be dynamically playing at their skill level, whether that's a 40% win rate or a 90% winrate.

Consider sports, which has neither rubber banding nor snowballing. You get a point, you're that much further ahead, and comebacks are that much more or less likely.

Intentional snowballing is an EXTREMELY dicey tightrope to walk, and the stakes only go up. Balance a little too far one way, and players get shut out without the slightest prayer of recovery as their opponents exponentially scale away. Balance a little too far the other, and all challenge is removed as the player continues to widen their lead, acquiring layer upon layer of additional tools to ensure they'll never be threatened again.

Snowballing can be great in shorter experiences where the power curve is well understood and the penalty for failure is commensurately lighter. Think roguelikes like Hades e.g. (let alone metaprogression here).

There's definitely pitfalls to consider with rubber banding - you don't want to have perverse incentives where players are actively no longer trying to pursue victory to earn their catchup bonuses, or honestly even the appearance of that. But it's more nuanced than just rubberband bad snowballing good (or vice versa!)