> Apologizing to a faceless group is pointless.

Well... it might be at least pragmatic. Apologising to the wider community for wronging a member of the community is normal; it's also expected.

And I guess apologising to one's audience for not being who they think you are is essentially, the same thing, just with a parasocial twist.

Parasocial "communities" exist (fandoms) and they do rather complicate things.

Apologizing to the mob is more likely to backfire: It's seen as an admission of guilt and that they're right to "cancel" the person.

Yeah, you should apologize before the mob forms. This is much more important for large corporations, if they do a big screwup and apologizes after massive backlash, that is bad, but if they apologize before the massive backlash its much better.