The Information Age has had a catalytic effect on the calls for ousters of any number of people for the merest hint of thoughtcrime.
I'll take it a step further. "cancel culture" is the same moral panic that's always existed. But now the power is put in the hands of the masses instead of the elite.
Cancel-culture panic is a largely anecdote and feelings-driven. There's no real data to show that firings or social consequences for speech are more numerous or more severe or more unjust (or even more "left-wing") today than they have been at any point in the past.
And in many of these anecdotes that seem to drive the discourse, nothing of note actually happens to the person who was "cancelled" - they are the subject of an investigation or social media dust-up for a news cycle. Then life carries on.
Not that there aren't legitimate free speech issues that we still wrestle with and don't get right or real injustices out there, but it's mostly a bugaboo.