Is ‘cancel culture’ really a threat to free speech?

The phrase “Twitter, do your thing” can set off a potentially powerful series of events in what has become a repeated online phenomenon: A person or brand does something considered offensive or problematic, a social media user posts about it and the incident snowballs across the internet, allowing countless people to put pressure on a person or organization until that entity is “canceled.”

The idea of “cancel culture” — first coined by Black Twitter users — dates back to 2015 and began as a means of calling out friends or...