I was browsing F-Droid when I noticed that Vayun Mathur had uploaded a lot of apps and games with similar titles and thumbnails in a short amount of time. These apps and games also spanned genres that were completely different from each other, which was weird because I’m pretty sure most people specialize in a certain type of game.
This developer should be investigated and if there’s enough evidence of him using AI he should be removed. I don’t want F-Droid to be overun with slop games, like other platforms.
Also I made this post specifically to raise awareness, since most people don’t notice stuff like this (even moderators).
No, but I am confused myself. How come this dev has knowledge across so many variants of stuff. & does this not mean end users getting slop filled apps? Free or not, this does raise a point. Also, we are for end users, not other way around. They mean right when this point is raised.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d like devs to contribute to already established apps and help their long term maintenance instead of starting redoing it all in a new app (ahem-matrix-ahem), but I do understand that devs (and people) feel more enthusiastic doing their own thing
/PS: one thing that’s better in a shared project is that, once the dev gets bored of their own app/fork that app is dead and users needs to scramble to switch
The apps are clearly all AI slop yes, but F-Droid has no AI policy, not even for labeling, so this is allowed on F-Droid. Unless F-Droid policy changes (which I have not seen any source/proof of that being likely to happen any time soon) you should not be surprised running into (fully) LLM-generated slop apps on F-Droid.
You can even use both F-Droid and IzzyOnDroid in the same client or use IzzyOnDroid just to check an app and still install it from F-Droid if you prefer. See Get Started - IzzyOnDroid.
Raise an issue in a repo with 40+ apps? When opening an issue, one should first look to not open a duplicate.
I gave their MA Astronomy a look when it came up, just for fun. Turned out to be “upside down”, as if it were using the selfie cam – which renders the app useless for the purpose (I have no eyes in my back to match what my eyes see on the screen). Wanted to search their issues if someone maybe was having the same problem. Gave up when I saw I’d stand no chance, as: how to filter?
And seeing those 40+ apps with basically a single dev in a single repo, “AI” was the first thought popping up. I gave up and simply uninstalled the app.
(dive into the insights on contributors: vayun 1500+ commits, weblate 500+, then “also running” – and some of the bots (see all the “empty avatars” in above screenshot) seemingly missing in that list)
And a volunteer willing to continue development for one of the apps, will have much fun extracting its code. But meh, multiple apps in a single repo might simply count as “bad practice”. But putting all points together, gives a different image – and to me, a rather “uneasy feeling”.
PS: just to clarify, this is my personal feeling as “a user” towards this app and its repo – and not a critic towards F-Droid. Though I wish there were at least an LLM label (ideally (also) a “slop” label if slop is accepted, but that would be hard to manage and raise a lot of fuzz, so better not) – I know an anti-feature is being discussed, and that would be really helpful in cases like this.
aww yiss, another sucsessful publicity stunt, special thanks to the guy who went “omg i can’t believe what i’m seeing, how can a mere mortal write such volumes of trivial inconsequential glue code so quickly, this must require immense levels of deep domain specidic expertise by logic watson”, and everyone who tattooed “AI doomer” on their foreheads, we couldn’t do this without you
People’s AI paranoia has made the internet a less fun place to be. Did any of you even read History of Modern-Apps (and Vayun Mathur) @ https://ma.vayunmathur.com/?
The dev himself replied to vdbhb59 in the issue they linked to earlier:
Most of these apps are deceptively simple. They operate around a simple system API or a web API so the knowledge required can be gleaned from just a single developer.android.com page.
and that he uses AI assistance
more for cohesiveness than the functionality. I write the code for the apps without following the library.* module’s conventions (because that’s how I’m more used to writing them), then ask AI to fix all my code to use those conventions so the apps are more cohesive and avoid leaking permissions and it enforces good practices in general for me.
Doesn’t this sound like a good use of AI that would result in better instead of bad code? He goes on to say:
Then there are some features here and there that are AI driven, like the office app’s Microsoft file support (because OOXML is um interesting, I’m remember the ODF has a writeup somewhere that explains this but I can’t find it anymore). I also use it to help reverse engineer stuff like with the (unreleased) messages and food delivery apps.
I don’t see the issue, but maybe someone could explain it to me.
Would you care to substantiate this claim? Or are you just baselessly insulting the result of other people’s hard work? Seriously asking, as maybe you do have good reasons to say this. But so many people just seem to lose their manners when they suspect something to be AI, and I just hope we can do better than that.
[An error occurred: Body is too similar to what you recently posted > I deleted that post and am trying to add it again without the faulty linkback to a specific post in this thread, thank you very much.]
In my ignorance I am suspicious of all things associated with AI, but unless AI code specifically contravenes F-droid’s inclusion criteria I don’t understand the complaint. I may not like or want the resulting applications, but that applies to many of F-droids apps so I simply don’t install them.
