What's at work is the recognition that "free speech" is a nice bumper sticker but doesn't go that far beyond that -- there are many policies one could pursue and plausibly call free speech. For instance, one could easily argue that we don't have free speech because money buys access. Somehow the right has been successful in claiming the mantle of "free speech" to mean something specific (basically that anyone can broadcast right-wing views without consequence) but that's not the only way the term could be conceived. There is also growing recognition that some things are outright harmful. Social media has already been implicated in pogroms; platitudes about the power of free speech seem to ring a bit hollow in that light.
On the cancel culture front, I don't agree. It actually refers to an incredibly broad segment of actions which almost nobody actually has much of a consistent line on. Often simply criticizing or refusing to patronize someone's business is called "canceling." Even if we narrowly refer to people losing their jobs, nobody actually believes there are NO circumstances whatsoever where losing your job might be an appropriate response to something you said. If you're a special ed teacher and post on Facebook that people with intellectual disabilities are less than human, one could reasonably doubt that you have any business having charge of special ed kids. If you want a more conservative flavored example, you could probably find conservatives endorsing cops losing their job if they bragged about not enforcing immigration laws. Or if you want an extremely uncontroversial example, you must at least believe it's appropriate not to VOTE for someone because you didn't like what they said. I don't think it's an accident. I think this term is so slippery and amorphous precisely because it obscures the hypocrisy at work.
On the cancel culture front, I don't agree. It actually refers to an incredibly broad segment of actions which almost nobody actually has much of a consistent line on. Often simply criticizing or refusing to patronize someone's business is called "canceling." Even if we narrowly refer to people losing their jobs, nobody actually believes there are NO circumstances whatsoever where losing your job might be an appropriate response to something you said. If you're a special ed teacher and post on Facebook that people with intellectual disabilities are less than human, one could reasonably doubt that you have any business having charge of special ed kids. If you want a more conservative flavored example, you could probably find conservatives endorsing cops losing their job if they bragged about not enforcing immigration laws. Or if you want an extremely uncontroversial example, you must at least believe it's appropriate not to VOTE for someone because you didn't like what they said. I don't think it's an accident. I think this term is so slippery and amorphous precisely because it obscures the hypocrisy at work.