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Tbh, I think the attempt to find a subject matter-neutral definition is pointless, and it's fine for 'cancel culture' to just mean when a group 'cancels' someone for poor reasons in ways that have negative consequences. If someone you know IRL regularly promotes pedophilia and isn't super clear about whether or not they'd actually engage in it themselves, it's fine to suggest that others stay away from that person. Whereas if someone IRL regularly promotes traditional conservatism, then it's absurd to suggest others stay away from that person. There's no difference in 'coordination of disassociation' between the two, but just by my gut the second is 'cancel culture' and the first isn't, and that's fine. I think this is closer to the way people actually use 'cancel culture'.
If someone in your gaming clan groomed a minor, so you dm your friends to have your friends ban them from any other groups they're admin in, that is "cancel culture" by your definition (grooming a minor over the internet is speech!), but I don't think the definition should include it. Or in another example, say you're running a regular rationalist meetup, and you hear from other rationalist community members that an infrequent attendee has been stalking/harassing other community members and has generally become unstable. You look at some of the evidence they sent, and in part because of your experience the last time you let such a person come anyway, you ban the person from your meetups indefinitely. This is, by your definition, cancel culture. But I think it's good, because such pruning is necessary to have fun events. This does not feel, to me, like cancel culture. But attempts to kick people out for being conservative or racist look exactly like that! Someone will claim racism necessarily harasses and harms minorities, sexism makes women not want to attend, and so banning the person is just pragmatic. (although because blah blah witches, the overlap between the two groups is much higher than you'd expect by chance) And when they do it, it's cancel culture, and a very central example! The reason we care about cancel culture is because it is/was common and is bad. There's no reason to adopt a formal definition that includes reasonable behavior as well.
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