Interesting question.
It’s ostracism, if we strip it back to the bare bones, but it’s being driven by social media, influencers, celebrities, and people using hashtags in particular.
If the prevailing view or culture among those either calling out bad behaviour or launching a campaign of outrage is predominantly left, and if it’s a knee-jerk reaction without taking two sides of argument into account, it might well be referred to in such circumstances as dumb lefty cancel culture.
In circumstances where the prevailing view/culture is predominantly right, the calling out or outrage - if mindless knee-jerk stuff - would obviously lend itself to being called dumb right cancel culture.
Is social media more likely to express a left view or a right view? I seem to remember reading that teenagers and young adults (18-36 or so) are more likely to hold views on the social left than on the social right, but the tendency is to move right with increased age. I don’t recall the source, and I’m not a political expert. Most social media is motorised by those age groups; there are disturbing examples of collective outrage; it can and does lead to decisions that effectively put some individuals or groups on the outside.
It can also force companies to change brand names, pull down commercials, etc.
It’s too complex for a simple answer… so I will leave my post to brew for a while.
