I agree in part with what you're saying - and disagree with some of it. I think there's a difference between attempting to police 'harm' and attempting to police 'voice'. The cancellation of R-Kelly, Weinstein et al, wasn't on the grounds of what they said - it was on the grounds of what they did.

'Cancel culture' has conflated what people say with what people do. There is a difference between espousing a particular view (let's say Christianity) and enforcing your view on others (by breaking the law and not serving cakes to lesbians) - you can say whatever you like, you cannot do whatever you like. Cancel Culture rarely differentiates.

And that's fine.... to a point. Because as you've suggested, people can bounce back from being cancelled if what they've been cancelled for is 'saying something'. Had JK Rowling gone out with a bat and beaten Trans people to death, I suspect she would've been properly cancelled long ago, but when you attempt to shut down the views of someone outside of the law on moral grounds, you simply create a binary and ask the audience to pick sides.

And what's being realised very quickly is that the easiest way not to be cancelled is a) not apologise and b) carry on with life. Within a few short years, the only people who can now be cancelled are those who still buy into the concept of mob justice (which is why the left is kicking itself to death) or those who have genuinely committed a heinous crime, who are pretty much ostricised from society anyway.

The public cannot police moral positions with any great effectiveness because there isn't a moral position on which we can all agree outside of the law. That is why we have laws. Cancel Culture is simply the tool by which someone asks an increasingly divided society to 'pick a side' - and like a lot of the social media activism it has sprung out of, it is incredibly flawed and divisive as a methodology.