I dont have time to research. I’m new and still trying to make my phone function without google. If I can’t take an FDroid statement to mean what it says…well thats another bag of worms I’ll leave alone.
Why didn’t you just say that in the first place. If that’s the case then I withdraw my complaint.
1 Like
I keep saying that yet you grasp at straws
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1 Like
Spinster, gab? Are there more??
Gab has an app? Link to the fully open source-code?
Spinster? This sounds like censorship: remove spinster app (!6013) · Merge requests · F-Droid / Data · GitLab ? Maybe: Revert "remove spinster app metadata" (!6076) · Merge requests · F-Droid / Data · GitLab ?
1 Like
Apparently they did. I’d guess they gave up on it when it became apparent the app stores (including f-droid) would ban them or put up roadblocks. It says it’s another fork of Tusky.
Spinster
Obviously the developer feels they were censored by f-droid:
https://blog.alexgleason.me/fdroid-banned-spinster/
Regarding Tusky, because it Rickrolls users to Youtube for entry of 3 sites, gab dot com, gab dot ai, or spinster dot xyz, shouldn’t it be tagged with “Non-Free Network Services” similar to other sites that sometimes “promote” non-free network services?
“Non-Free Network Services: This Anti-Feature is applied to apps that promote or depend entirely on a Non-Free network service.”
OsmAnd+ could be compared. It has the Tag, but you have to tap pretty far in just the right places before it offers to download images or add-on software. Which is to say - I had to search for it before I ran into it, as with Tusky.
1 Like
Uff, the article you linked has slices of drama, like “F-Droid maintainer Bubu advocating for division of the FOSS community.”
I’m not going to enter into the background ideas of the author (some of them I support), but these slices drive me mad.
-
There’s no “FOSS community”. There are FOSS projects. Most of them protected by IP and licensed under a permisive license that allow others to do some stuff with the code. FOSS projects can be, themselves, communities, as they’re focused on a common objective.
-
F-Droid is an app with a default repo and the ability to add 3rd party repos. What’s hosted on the default repo is what repo maintainers do want to add, when they want.
-
There’s no censorship on a FOSS project because their maintainers avoid certain stuff because their ideas. If tusky app wants to ban something, it can. You’re welcome to fork the project and allow or ban different sets of things at your own discretion
-
There’s no censorship on F-Droid unless they ban the ability to add 3rd party repos based on which apps these repos are hosting.
-
Online chat rooms are moderated or not. If you enter a chat room that’s moderated you’re
under moderation. If you get banned you can add a clickbait header “FOSS maintainer bans me and splits FOSS communities because he wants to impose his own views, and that’s an example of how borked the project is”, but the right fact is that you were banned because reasons.
You’re entitled to join a project and give your POV. Project maintainers are entitled to block you if they wish. If you think “FOSS is a community” you might feel censored. If you think “they’re maintaining a repo and don’t want to argue with me”, you would take Bubu suggestion as a good advice and host your own repo with the policies you want where you can be that censor.
Feel free to disagree, but no strawman arguments please.
3 Likes
You have put this very well. f-droid isn’t a government. It’s a group of people who are working to publish and distribute apps that they like. In this case, it’s open source Android apps. If f-droid declines to publish something, they aren’t censoring it. No one has the right to tell f-droid what they have to publish. They choose not to publish non-open-source software. They can choose not to publish other things as well.
5 Likes
Interesting that “the good fight” hit a roadblock and suddenly they can’t put an APK on their website or host an actual repo. But they can talk…and talk…and talk…and make new accounts to talk some more, and make looong posts.
They can feel, then again I feel than spinning (lol) it to “feminist vs F-Droid” and “F-Droid is anti-women in tech” is wow… such a $hitty way to argue about an app. Good thing that I didn’t see those articles back then, given that I did not agree with the F-Droid post actually… funny how those could have the opposite effect than what they wanted.
Not really, it’s optional I’d say… you might see that if you enter some magic word, 99.99% would not anyway.
1 Like
Two things; It isn’t just governments that can impose censorship. Anybody can do that within their own sphere of influence. And secondly not all censorship is bad. I’m sure that 99.99% think that censorship of pedophilia porn is a good thing.
But when it comes to F-Droid it is disturbing that it is not at all clear when, how and on what grounds they will impose censorship. I’ve tried to read this thread many times, but I feel that I’m still in the dark. As I said earlier not all censorship is bad, but the principals should be clear and how it is applied should be transparent.
1 Like
I agree, but not for the same reason. When you try to ban or suppress something, it gets more attention, not less. You may or not be happy with the results.
Gab has gone from ~8400 to 5300 alexa rank in last 90 days, while F-droid is hovering around 76000.
Actually gab’s public posts don’t seem too bad, just a little stupid and conspiracy-theory oriented. Does anyone know a temporary email they will accept for new accounts?
(Non-free Net tagging for Tusky) it’s optional I’d say
This seems too arbitrary. Embrace the censorship and advertise it. Don’t try to hide or deny it. Maybe a new tag with postive spin (cough): “This app protects you by preventing your access to parts of the Internet the developers dislike…Opt out is NOT available.”
Time to beef up the f-droid TOS list under #2, a fitting #?
It’s important to get the words right. Otherwise people will run around claiming to be “oppressed”. The distinction is that “censorship” is preventing someone from publishing something. Declining to publish something yourself is not censorship. f-droid declines to publish anything that isn’t a FOSS Android app, but that doesn’t make it a censor of non-FOSS Android apps.
I agree with @anon46495926 below that it’s better for f-droid if it clarifies how all this is done. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying that what’s on f-droid is curated according to the tastes of some set of people, or if it has a particular code-of-conduct that it is trying to uphold.
According to Wikipedia
“Governments and private organizations may engage in censorship.”
And that proves what exactly? Why mention this?
Great, then it’s all good I guess 
Ummm, you can’t access those sites, no matter if youtube is accessible or not, hence the antifeature is not needed.
The app functionality, to block those websites, is not affected.
The more words you add the more people with an agenda can complain about those exact works, and ask for more words. This is why the post exists, this is why this thread exists. Every time someone will get another “but what if” that needs some more words to cover.
@Licaon_Kter I didn’t say they had to clarify everything. It could just say that the apps are curated by the f-droid community and that would be better than leaving people to think that anything that is FOSS automatically qualifies.
Whose speech is suppressed when f-droid declines to distribute an app? Is f-droid suppressing non-FOSS apps? No one is stopping the app authors from distributing their apk somewhere else.
Despite restrictions in some apps, one of the disliked sites is becoming more popular, according to that metric. Unfortunately, F-droid is not. Data is interesting.
TL:DR: I used to think I could trust F-droid organization and app to warn me about important anti-features. No longer. A non-free network and/or blocklist warning or opt-in or opt-out is important, and missing from for example Tusky, with approval of F-droid reviewers.
This discussion made me feel better about not participating in “Federated Twitter” in general, as it becomes obvious censorship and suppression abounds there. Thanks for that.
Kudos to apps like Privacy Browser with blocklists opt-out, and being obvious blocklists are used.
Kudos to Torproject and Torbrowser. Torproject knows their tools are used by people they strongly disagree with, or hate. However, they do not restrict how the tools are used, or block users from going anywhere they choose, or divert them to other places. Instead, they spoke out against those people or attitudes. Torbrowser warns users about technical issues such as invalid certificates, etc., but it gives users freedom of choice. Some websites block or delay Torbrowser access, but that’s a different problem.
PS. With all due respect to @Robin , Wikipedia is an unreliable reference, but we agree on the definition of censorship anyway.
Data is, sometimes it isn’t. F-Droid did not compete in a “famous scandals” contest. Again, popular sites can just set their own
repos/APKs, F-Droid is all about decentralization, or it doesn’t hamper their ability to host.
Still true…
Did you check all the apps source-code? Are you sure we don’t compile other apps that limit your freedom?
This feels dishonest somehow, we got all the flack from both sides while gaining nothing.
Hosting Tusky we censor someone, not hosting Tusky we censor someone else.
Hosting a Tusky fork we are nazies, not hosting a Tusky fork we censor someone else.
Which is the “one true way” to fix this for everyone?
We approve code openness not app functions, that’s up to the user. Hey, it doesn’t open “myfavsite.tld”? Uninstall… next.
You are not forced to use Tusky, you know that? Fedilab still works, right?
Umm so if one is blocking posts/users from other instances that one finds problematic is now censorship? I thought it was the definition of freedom.
Anyway I think I’ve made my thoughts clear, hope others add their…
For me, host all submitted “free software” apps, if they are legal… Tag them appropriately based on objective criteria, like good computer programmers. If you wish to have politics or morality tags or warnings, OK, but I doubt F-droid organization could agree on a list or state criteria.
IMO, Tusky should be tagged Non-Free Network, because there are more than zero conditions when it sends you to a non-free network, YouTube. Why is this not obvious?
1 Like