> Social punishment (in the form of shunning, boycotts, "cancelling", etc) has been around as long as human society has existed and is incredibly popular.
True. There’s a reasonable argument[1] that such things should continue to exist. The strongest way of phrasing it, I think, is that we do not want to have to pass a law against being an arsehole, nor do we actually want the letter of such a law enforced with the full might of the state, but there still needs to be some way of punishing it. The only counterpoint here is, I think, that the severity of such punishments seems to be vastly underestimated.
(If you’re going to refer to ancient societies, many of them used or accepted such a punishment as a substitute for the death penalty, as for instance with the Roman custom of permitting voluntary exile before conviction. And that still in a world where you could travel a few hundred kilometers in the right direction and reasonably expect nobody to ever learn of your sins.)
Also beside the point, however. The question is not whether we should shun people (we should, with a fair few qualifications), but whether such penalties should be levied for words. I posit that no, for an overwhelming majority of words they shouldn’t, where the possible exceptions are somewhere around ongoing mass murder and the Milles Collines[2]; and that letting your opponents speak and listening to them should by default be virtuous, socially rewarded behaviour.
[1] https://dynomight.net/bad/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...