“I think the idea of art kills creativity.”

--Douglas Adams

"I'm going to kill you" isn't creative expression (and some intentionally misinterpret obvious jokes as 'threats')

Summary: Free speech is certainly under attack and the debate is being framed within the context of Nazism; but this overlooks the fact that there are actual death threats (unlike the above) and calls for genocide in the mix

"F-Droid abandons neutrality to censor Gab oriented apps," LXer said this morning (there's more to that effect in recent LXer comments). It pointed to this week's statement from F-Droid, which said: "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. This includes that it won’t distribute an app that promotes the usage of previously mentioned website, by either its branding, its pre-filled instance domain or any other direct promotion. This also means F-Droid won’t allow oppression or harassment to happen at its communication channels, including its forum. In the past week, we failed to fulfill this goal on the forum, and we want to apologize for that."

One person said things along the lines of [1, 2], "if you are at war against free software, f-droid has just handed you a new weapon" and "then there were three freedoms-- no more freedom 0."

"Death threats aren't to be respected or tolerated."I spent nearly a year cross-posting in Gab before realising that the site had truly become toxic. Some time last year or the year before that there was little left in the site other than extremists, who issued even death threats to me. Then they started banning people who opposed the extremists as though the "trolls" were in fact decent people. I wrote about it last year in my personal blog and similar conversations could be found online. Here in Techrights we've long been free speech absolutists who don't regard physical threats and/or violence to be "speech"; that's crossing a line, based on underlying laws that forbid it explicitly. There's also a news story to that effect right now [1,2]. Death threats aren't to be respected or tolerated. Only sick people would defend such public discourse. ⬆

“The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.”

--Dale Carnegie

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Anti-vaxxer escalates from wishing children dead to threatening to kill adult lawmakers

   The feds charged Darryl Varnum in late June after he told the Congresswoman he was ‘gonna kill your ass if you do that bill,’ report The Beast's Jackie Kucinich and Lachlan Markay.

2. Pentagon Contractor Allegedly Threatened to Kill Congresswoman Over Vaccine Bill

   “I’m gonna kill your ass if you do that bill. I swear,” Varnum’s voicemail began. “I will fucking come down and kill your fucking ass. And you’re a Congressperson, that’s fine. I hope the fucking FBI, CIA and everybody else hears this shit.”