Only going on an aggressive offense will work.
A bully will never back down if the victim apologizes: this will cause the victim only to be bullied more.
The bully must feel the hard fist of his victim breaking his nose, there is no other way.
I noticed the same thing in the 90s in France, a country were many still have a cult of the revolution. Anytime you had 1000 guys vociferating in the street, they are somehow referred to as "the people" (except if their opinion is contrary to major newspapers, then it is a "small violent mob"). The reality is that it is only 1000 guys in a population of 60 millions. They are representative of nothing else than themselves. But it's a way for journalists to push their own opinions like if somehow they were mainstream.
It's the same today. You can find 10k retweets for any random cause, even hitler. But if they align to major newsrooms opinions, they will be presented as expression of the public opinion. And I think the people doing the cancelling (employers firing, companies cancelling contracts) are more worried of the media than of the twitter mob. But given how little credibility the media have those days, they could safely ignore them and nothing would happen. Unless they evolve in those few liberal circles where all your friends will turn their back on you if you think differently on a single thing.
Not scalable, often infeasible. Is it effective? Who knows?
I'm asking you to be clear about what this is. It's not obvious to me what "force" is in this context.