In the most polite way possible: these comments are not well-considered.

There are such things as mobs that arise during or after sporting events, you know. (What's the majority/minority
balance there?) So Twitter mobs, too, are very much a thing—no need for a stretch of
the imagination. The threats both of these pose are squarely in the category
of things to be concerned about wrt the dangers of mobs. And to argue about
things like the "classical liberal [...] belief that speech can't harm people" (i.e. that the belief is wrong)
while asserting that there is no threat of harm posed by clear-cut examples of mobs on Twitter is to talk out of both sides of the mouth.

> You can argue that cancellations are mobs, but the existence of mobs doesn't
"mob rule" make.

With the ability to rationalize thoughts like this, is there even any point of
trying to approach this with reason?

> Or even the example of the truck driver, where the "mob" actually
backpedaled and apologized, but the authority figure didn't. You can fault
the "mob" for acting quickly, yes, but you can't fault it for aiming to
sentence people unjustly.

Sorry, the obvious attempt to sidestep here is too obvious. Reddit may have
the best of intentions in trying to find the Boston bombers, but that doesn't
make it any less exemplary of a mob in action.

The whole attempt to narrowly recognize mobs only when a minority is
threatened is stultifying, and your entire line of reasoning is just begging
the question. Tyranny of the majority is a thing, but they're definitions
that overlap in their examples; they're not synonymous, even if the overlap is
significant.

In a prison, the inmates outnumber the guards, but that doesn't preclude a mob
mentality taking hold if the guards' behavior turned mob-like (or, say, police
behavior e.g. during in a protest where outnumbered by prostestors). At the
same time, mob rule remains a possibility in the scenario involving the
reverse. The numbers stay the same, but in each there's a plausible picture
of mobs and mob rule. Majority/minority is not only not the defining factor,
it's a footnote.

The actual key to understanding mobs, mob rule, and the dangers they pose
comes from recognizing the parallels between the bystander effect (where the
undesirable outcome is most commonly inaction) to mob mentality (where the
undesirable outcome is most commonly action)—it's diffusion of
responsibility/accountability, mixed with other things, case-specific.

> But I can say that certain cases were bad while also believing that the net
impact of the culture that did bad things is good, or is moving us forward.

This is just another attempt to make an illegal move, like the sidestepping
above. This time, it's implicit false dichotomy. Keep the good while
eliminating the bad—that's what's in the argument to handle this without the
chilling effect that cancel culture has.

> either you start from the liberal position that cancellation is just speech,
and deserves exactly as much protection as any other speech

All right, so you don't accurately characterize the totality of diversity on
your opponents' side and now it's come to strawmanning, then (or at least a
failure to steelman—opting to attack the weakest of ones' opponents positions
instead). There's a (possibily majority [hah!]) position among those speaking
against cancellation culture that doesn't involve removing these protections
of the speech. Yascha Mounk can float the idea of various things that involve
the law being used to enforce drastic changes to the permissibility of
cancellation efforts, but it doesn't mean everyone with a like mind about the
dangers of cancellation culture agrees with it. Present an argument against
those who acknowledge that the speech/actions are protected but should
voluntarily be avoided rather than wielded.

Popehat may be widely cited, but the arguments on this topic never fail to not be facile.