Flag them and do not hide them by default in the F-Droid app. Then no one has an issue with it. So use another anti-feature flag than NSFW to distinct between real problematic app and the religious one. Problem solved. Why that is so difficult to understand. Hiding such apps by default is the real problem here. Not the flag itself.
You got the shitstorm and a lot of users complaining due to the fact that harmless (for nearly all users, not you obviously) are hidden now by default.
I have read all that and more. I’m not a new F-DROID user.
The ask is very simple: undo your changes, keep the apps public, and if you must, tag them with a neutral, non-filtering label like “Religious Texts.” What you’ve done is not tagging, it’s outright censorship and unnecessary moral policing.
It is not your role to act as moral police over texts that are legal everywhere, taught to children, and distributed openly across the globe. If you want to block ■■■■, do it. That’s legally restricted.
I read the MR on the Quran. What I saw was a decision to effectively ban all Quran apps because someone cherry-picked quotes used by Islamophobes, and the team just went along with it. That means any biased bigoted person with zero theological or historical literacy can manipulate your process and you’ll rubber-stamp it. That’s already low-effort moderation.
…Google is building a choke point that restricts competition and limits user freedom. It must find a solution which preserves user rights, freedom of choice, and a healthy, competitive ecosystem.
…but the principle that software should remain a commons, accessible and free from unnecessary corporate gatekeeping.
You claim to stand against corporate gatekeeping, yet you’ve imported censorship straight into F-DROID. You’re building the same choke points you pretend to oppose. And the worst part? You’re too blinded by your own prejudice to see it.
It’s tragic that F-DROID is becoming the very thing it swore to destroy. You’re not protecting anyone. You’re blinded by bias, and you’ve chosen to die on this hill. The court of public opinion is heavily against this (See HackerNew, Twitter e.t.c.) yet you refuse to budge.
I hope you are backed by the board (@seabass and co.) because this is a PR and potentially legal nightmare you folks are walking F-DROID into.
Edit:
Already violating principle 4? Not looking so good.
This reads like a discrimination of religious beliefs, which is illegal in nearly all EU countries.
Marking bible as “violence” is a cherry on the top. Good thing your favorite gay furry apps don’t have it, despite promoting violence against religious people.
Thank you for making your stance clear, and motivating me to find an alternative to F-Droid.
@linsui
Come on, thats not a granualrity one wants to apply to all apps i feel.
I symapthise with the argument but i dont think reading a violent Book, socialmedia or playing a game needs a NSFW warning, so neither should “Biblereaders” because the app doesnt promote anything and may be used purely for enlightened historical research.
What’s weird here is that Joshua Beny has given F-Droid an easy path off your suicide ledge, F-Droid won’t take it and some joker sees fit to justify the CIA agenda. He goes on to write:
Well, we don’t flag them because they contain religious content. We flag them because they contain ■■■■ [sexual?] and violence content.
Okay, then put Reddit and all the news app behind the same filter.
You’ll have your safe space. I don’t know how much user support you’ll have though.
And I will have to hope @thelastofus’s efforts to remove public funding for your anti-Christian crusade succeeds. There’s no way F-Droid or any other technical site should receive public funding to attempt to erase the church (or Islam). Whatever happened to freedom of religious belief and freedom of expression?
If the app contains something which is either sensitive or showcasing or provocative, should the developer not make it his/her point as well to make it work and remove or somehow blur/sensitivize etc that content? These claims all seem to be nothing but bad naming F-Droid and flaming others. Go to reddit where one can rant on please. All LK & L have done is try and make people understand. But all some flamers are bothered about is how to bad mouth and give bad name to F-Droid. It is a 2 way street, and if the content is something which needs labeling, it should be. Linsui explained, it is provoking families to kill if someone believes in other god and stuff.
Why is everyone going blindside to not read that part and just keep on ranting?
This I should not have written without checking the background.
F-Droid is open and hence people are speaking unlike other forums where those get banned or blocked etc. Open your eyes and understand, do not just mumble and jumble stuff.
@vdbhb59 Please don’t delete your comments. You are a board member, own your actions. Everyone here gets an email. We are not “blind“ we can clearly see what @linsui is implying.
Don’t you think you are a bit biased saying “provoking families to kill if someone believes in other god and stuff“ given that you contribute to the Jain Mahapurana Wikipedia page and your specific contribution can be interpreted as a direct contradiction of Abrahamic creation doctrines? Don’t you think it would be unfair if I took sentimental verses of similar themes of violence (Adharma) which are prevalent from the Hindu Mahapuranas or Bhagvad Gita out of context?
The optics are not looking good here.
Only reason I deleted my comments was due to the fact I felt I responded in a bad state of manners and probably hastily, without reading that part from where linsui was commenting about, and I should not have done that. I know everyone gets emails and I am not trying to hide anything at all. I am more open than you can imagine. I am reinstating my comment.
Your point on Jainism and Hinduism, I have no clue what you mean by that.
Update: that was 9+ years ago and I was probably rectifying the texts or something there. I was an admin then (and may still be one, don’t recall). If you will see there have been several such edits across wikipedia and moderation done by me.
Absolutely beyond the pale. If AndBible is to be censored because it can be used to download objectionable content, then Dashchan and Mastodon clients should be censored for likewise. But thank you to F-Droid for making your bigotry so transparent. It will enable rational folks to avoid your project in the future.
BTW, before anymore people go on about, there is a internal discussion ongoing about this topic and we are trying to get things sorted asap. Please hold on and kindly keep a positive approach.
From what I have read I seem to see that certain people supporting this have absolutely 0 understanding of Christian Theology and the Bible at all, maybe said person just searched “TOP 10 MOST EVIL BIBLE VERSE?!?!?!?!?!”.
This is a silly change.
I really hope rationality prevails here. 1 popular app has already been pulled. There is a reason why the likes of GAFAM don’t mess around with religion. To the closeted Christophobes/Islamophobes/AntiSemites working at F-DROID, keep your prejudices within your personal space and don’t let it affect collective decisions that will harm an already fragile project.
Come on, I agree that the NSFW categorization is not the right call, but please don’t pretend that this is an “anti-Christian crusade”, or that this is a coordinated attempt to “erase the church”. That’s just plain bullshit, it weakens any argument against the policy, and it makes discussion nigh impossible. Don’t go playing the victim
Long time FDroid user here. This update is actually despicable and makes me reconsider using FDroid going forward. Creating a new anti-feature for religious content and allowing filtering based on that is the only acceptable solution here. Lumping religious content into NSFW (which potentially entails removal in the future) and additionally, claiming that the Christian Bible promotes pornography and violence is unbelievably outrageous. The fact that this change made it through, despite all rational process, and despite FDroid receiving EU funding is baffling to me. It seems your org needs a fundamental re-evaluation, restructure, and public apology going forward from this.
On the point about potential removal:
Now more then ever, people of all religions should have access to FOSS resources for their faith. Apps on mainstream app-stores have routinely been caught surveiling their users, and in some cases, selling the data directly to government agencies.
Very very disappointed to see a project I love so much make such a monumental blunder like this. Unironically do better
Thank you for reconsidering it and discuss it internally and reverting that change for now. Hope it stays that way or a neutral only flag which is not filtered by default is used.
It’s obviously political; a lot of FOSS projects decided to get into politics in recent years, I even lived enough to once see a language compiler giving its opinions on geopolitics on a new version release.
Hi,
Long time FDroid user here, just wanted to step in in order to try to find a middle-ground.
First, it’s clear both the Bible and the Quran contains violent scenes and sexually explicit scenes, and I do think no one can contest that fact. Picturing violence, even if the purpose is showing that you shouldn’t resort to violence, is still picturing violence. Those holy books obviously do contain violent and sexually explicit scenes. Please note I didn’t say “promote” nor “endorse”.
Second, it seems to me that everyone agrees that NSFW is a term most commonly associated to pornography, even if in the strictest sense it also includes violence. The in-app description is also somewhat poorly worded (being much narrower than the website’s description of the antifeature, and using the word “promotes”). And thus it might not be the right term for describing apps showing violence.
Last, if an antifeature is to be tagged on apps including violence and/or sexually explicit content, it should be tagged on every app having such content, and only such apps. Not every Bible/Quran app contains the specific verses with violence/sexually explicit content (there was an exemple of one showing only motivational quotes). Also, some apps with violence aren’t tagged (org.zamedev.gloomydungeons2.opensource as an example), they may have slipped through the cracks but the policy must clearly say they should also be tagged.
So, from what I’ve read, may I suggest the creation of two new antifeatures “Contains violence” and “Contains sexually explicit references”, without any judgement as of what is inside (thus using the word “contain” or a synonym, not “promotes” nor “endorse”), without hiding apps having those tags by default and applying such tags selectively as a replacement of current NSFW tag?
If some people do express the desire to hide apps having those tags, maybe a prompt on first start could be added so people can select the anti-features they want to see in addition to the toggle in settings?
I unfortunately can’t see a way to distinguish more precisely, because if you can’t put the Bible/Quran in the same bag as a hentai app, you also cannot put exception on a policy for religious books. If the new policy is “everything that contains violent content gets the ‘contains violence’ tag, except religious books” that would be an undue exception. Creating two antifeatures “mild violence” and “extreme violence”, last of which is hidden by default, is also purely subjective, as the Bible also contains what can only be described as extreme violence (crucifixion, to name only one). Also, who should be responsible for filtering between those two categories?
Hope this message will help having a more sane debate.
P.S.: Please also stop spreading conspiracy theories about public funding or targetting the FDroid project or team as anti-christian/anti-islam/anti-semitic because someone made a proposal that is still under discussion right here. The “FDroid project”, which includes you, hasn’t made it definitive stance yet, that’s exactly what this debate is about.
P.S. #2: Everything is political. Nothing is neutral. Neutrality doesn’t exist. Period. All sides here are being political. Even myself. That’s exactly why there’s a debate and having such a debate on an open-source project is sane. Neutrality can’t be achieved, but we can tend to a better end by debating. That’s what democracy’s about.
P.S. #3: We’re not talking about removing those apps at all. Tagging an anti-feature isn’t a first step before removing an app.
As others have said, flags are not being applied equally as apps that actually do contain NSFW content and specifically state it aren’t flagged.
I believe the best thing is to do this, just add a tag that says “Religious Text”.
Though, I do not think “anti-feature” is a good descriptor for this.
I’m not religious and I don’t care about Bible apps, I really don’t. But what I really care about is that the platform that I and thousands of others have come to rely on to access software free of anti features is not tainted by the political or moral beliefs of others. So I was very interested when I came along this thread.
Let me quote the definition of NSFW according to F-Droid (abbreviated) :
The marked app may contain nudity, profanity, slurs, violence, intense sexuality, political incorrectness, or other potentially disturbing subject matter.
Wow that’s a pretty wide net you cast here Mr. Core Contributor, what have you caught in it ? Bible apps !
Oh yes, of course, wisely remarked. Let’s cast the net again, what do you get this time ? Quran apps ! Hey is it not neat that with such a vague and broad definition religious apps have been caught twice in a row ? Sometimes coincidences are funny like that.
Since everyone’s in good faith here let me help you find other offending apps. Any game involving killing things. Murder is pretty violent in my book right ? Any game involving territorial conquest. No one’s going to argue that war and colonization are not abhorrent. Any game involving thinking a lot. I mean, it’s pretty disturbing to me when I realize that I’m dumb so I don’t want any of that subject matter. Any app allowing me to read the news. The other day I came across a report of a school child being raped by his teacher. I wasn’t even actively looking for it, it was just one of the news of that sad day. Imagine if a child had access to a news reader, or worse, a browser. I even heard that in that reddit app they had subreddits for … religion ! And lots of them, not just two, no, no, a lot and really proselytizing like.
Ok ok you got me I was being facetious. But only a little. But seriously: thanks for reconsidering this change, now please reword the NSFW AF to be not so broad (like do a little more effort than copy-pasting from Wikipedia) and create a new category for religious apps if you really want to. But please, please no morals in my free software. Thank you very much.