F-Droids statement on their ban of Gab

F-Droids statement on their ban of Gab
f-droid.org

Very bad decision here.

> "F-Droid won’t tolerate oppression or harassment against marginalized groups. Because of this, it won’t package nor distribute apps that promote any of these things."

You might as well not package FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) Facebook/Twitter/Mastodon clients because there are also bad actors on those platforms who harass others based on their religion, race, gender and other differences.

What is the point of totally banning them when they are just going to keep forking open-source projects. Doing this sort of censorship defeats the purpose of FLOSS and violates the first freedom on how a user should use their software as they wish for any purpose.

As a result, Gab is just going to exercise freedom 4.

Gab is free to speak everything they speak: yayyyyy that is the right way we are indestructible

F-Droid is free to remove their app: what the fuck do these this is unlawful and illegal and mandates prison

And when it comes to "not all Gab people are like that": these Gab users don't seem to perform much action against the harassers that exist on that platform - contrary to many other places on the Internet, whose communities actually do something about the hate speech problem.

Unfortunately nobody taking a stance will lead to that horrible behaviour increasing.

The argument "Because X and Y have similar technical implementations in what users can do" is irrelevant here, it's about the intent/goals/policies/how widespread it is.

I welcome anything that reduces hate speech that is officially accepted on some platforms. That is a real problem and one that needs to be dealt with in any way possible.