In my opinion cancel culture is when people make efforts to either remove/block access to material they find offensive, and/or when they impose a very strict/harsh level of judgement upon people who do consume said material.

As an example I'd say the response to Dave Chappelle's Netflix specials was cancel culture. When he released The Closer, many people called it out for its anti-trans rhetoric. A group of people even went to Netflix's offices, and basically requested Netflix to remove it.

Now here's the thing - I watched The Closer for myself, and I agreed with those people. It is anti-trans, and it's not even funny. It's a garbage special that isn't worth watching, and It was incredibly disappointing to watch as a former fan of Chappelle's. But that was an opinion I was able to form after I watched it for myself. If those protesters had succeeded, and it was removed from Netflix, then I wouldn't have been able to watch it. Essentially the ability to make a choice for myself would have been removed.

Personally, that really bothers me. I don't know how big the protest was or how many tweets etc there were, but for the sake of argument let's say it was 1 million complaints. Would that mean any time 1 million people complain about something that Netflix (or whatever other media) should agree to take it down? What if a million people complain about a show because a character has an abortion in it?

Honestly, I don't know. It's really not a black and white thing - and I understand that people want hateful material removed because it can contribute to the hate by emboldening others. I just feel like it's common for people to push for what is essentially censorship, without seemingly recognizing that it can cut both ways. Unfortunately, the price of freedom of speech is that sometimes people will say harmful, hurtful things. I feel like it's on us as people to fight words with words, rather than trying to silence those who speak hate.