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Bible and Quran apps flagged NSFW by F-Droid

125 points by jtlebigot 1y ago

sipofwater 1y ago
* "New Oklahoma schools superintendent rescinds mandate for Bible instruction in schools": https://apnews.com/article/oklahoma-schools-bible-mandate-superintendent-630b2f706731224a070d7fef6a35b7d8 https://apnews.com/article/oklahoma-schools-bible-mandate-su... (apnews.com/article/oklahoma-schools-bible-mandate-superintendent-630b2f706731224a070d7fef6a35b7d8) * "Want the Bible in public school classrooms? There's an app for that": https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/11/04/an-oklahoman-wants-ryan-walters-to-considering-a-free-bible-app-instead-of-spending-millions-on-athe/75570802007/ https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/11/04/an-oklahoman... (www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/11/04/an-oklahoman-wants-ryan-walters-to-considering-a-free-bible-app-instead-of-spending-millions-on-athe/75570802007/); https://archive.ph/14iDg https://archive.ph/14iDg
puppycodes 1y ago
Because they are?
- general1465 1y ago
  It is like red states in USA few years ago banning NSFW books from schools only to find out that Bible is NSFW too by every today metric. Why would it be surprising for them? I guess the never read the book they are preaching.
bigyabai 1y ago
The justification makes perfect sense. This Anti-Feature is applied to an app that contains content that the user may not want to be publicized or visible everywhere. The marked app may contain nudity, profanity, slurs, violence, intense sexuality, political incorrectness, or other potentially disturbing subject matter. This is especially relevant in environments like workplaces, schools, religious and family settings. The name comes from the Internet term “Not safe for work”.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  I feel like you didn't read the discussion at all? One of the apps does not contain any Bible verses, it is used to track which books, chapters and verses you've read.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    Does it matter? F-Droid is a distributor, they're allowed to reject apps they consider controversial or outside their wheelhouse. The person who spoke up was correct, the ruling is consistent and the definition of NSFW content makes sense to me. Evangelism isn't exempted from being called and labelled as slopware. These people can perfectly well distribute their apps without F-Droid's help, they're not refusing to sign their app or somesuch.
    - giancarlostoro 1y ago
      It is not consistent, is the reddit app going to be removed next? It makes no sense. What about violent FPS games? Consistency would be that they in fact are removing everything that's NSFW.
      - mschuster91 1y ago
        The consistency is that the presence of a Reddit app or a Youtube app per se doesn't reveal too much about the device owner. A Bible reader/tracker app, a Quran learning app... now that's where you enter a more sensitive area, religious beliefs are among the higher protected classes of data under GDPR. And now there's a few potential threat sources: family members snooping through their relative's phones, border control snooping through phones (remember, apostasy is a crime punishable by death in some Muslim countries), or the worst one, random ad SDKs pulling in and distributing lists of installed APKs and pushing these to the mothership, where the data can then be hoovered up by anyone willing to pay for it, with the same result [1]. I wish I didn't need to write this, but it's not just some random Middle East theocracy going for its citizens as usual for the crime of not believing into the god of choice, we're seeing people being threatened for their faith (or lack of it) right in the United States of America, right now. [1] https://theintercept.com/2025/05/22/intel-agencies-buying-data-portal-privacy/ https://theintercept.com/2025/05/22/intel-agencies-buying-da...
pclmulqdq 1y ago
[flagged]
- nish__ 1y ago
  [flagged]
- dang 1y ago
  Don't take HN threads into religious flamewar please. Last thing we need here.
  - pclmulqdq 1y ago
    I honestly meant this in a "no religion in the office" sense, but people started responding with bible quotes.
    - dang 1y ago
      I believe you that you didn't mean it as a generic religious flamestarter, but in that case your intent didn't come across in the comment. So it's predictable that people responded with flaming reactions of their own. This may be helpful for avoiding this sort of outcome in the future: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=burden%20disambiguate%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
inglor 1y ago
Discussion of the merge request to mark it as nsfw https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/27861 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/27861 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252 Edit - found more context: https://f-droid.org/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html https://f-droid.org/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409794 I still don't get it to be honest.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  If it wasn't for the fact that they totally only targeted Bible apps and ignored things like reddit when doing this I would say its just an honest mistake, but they only seemingly marked Bible related apps. In one instance the developers app isn't even an app that contains the Bible, its a Bible reading tracker so you can keep track of which verses you have read thus far, still marked NSFW. There was not enough thought put into this ban and it only seems to target one demographic of apps.
  - inglor 1y ago
    They seem to disagree https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/27861#note_2830235219 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/27861#... > We don't flag general apps, e.g., ebook readers and browsers. But bible readers are not general apps. They are designed to read bible and there are NSFW contents in bible. Honestly I think their argument is pretty weak, especially since like you said in this case it was a bible reading tracker.
    - giancarlostoro 1y ago
      Again though, one of the apps has NONE of the Bible content, it is only "I've read Genesis 1:1" type of stuff, it is to track what you've read... As pointed out in the PR... there's violent games with NSFW descriptions that were not flagged. The fact they're ignoring so much is what makes me think this has nothing to do with NSFW content removal.
autoexec 1y ago
If they insist on flagging things as NSFW then this would be the correct action for those apps that contain the texts. It seems like apps that are bible related and don't contain the text are being flagged though which should be fixed.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  This is my issue with it as well, but also, why did the PR only target Bible apps? Seemingly in a very lazy way at that. Had they taken time to understand how each app works and its purpose, they would have only flagged apps that contain the Bible itself. I would hope reddit and other apps that actually contain graphic NSFW content are next?
  - mvdtnz 1y ago
    The only merge request you've seen targets bible apps. How do you know this isn't one part of a larger effort to correctly mark apps? Maybe they've tackled other categories previously, or had intended to tackle other categories going forward. The fact that bible apps is included in one wave of markings doesn't mean only bible apps are affected.
    - giancarlostoro 1y ago
      Other examples were provided in the PR, I see no other PRs. Why was the PR only focused on them? I doubt we'll see additional PRs for other apps.
- grapesodaaaaa 1y ago
  Totally agree. They should be flagged 18+ and required ID verification if we want to play on a level field.
  - Hizonner 1y ago
    How about "a small, strapped project that can use all the friends it can get shouldn't be wasting time on maintaining irrelevant metadata"? Not having categories like "NSFW" would be a nice level playing field.
madaxe_again 1y ago
I mean, yes, these are religious texts, but if we are to judge them on a level with other content, they absolutely warrant a warning. The abrahamic religious texts intersect largely around the Old Testament, which is a smorgasbord of genocide, slavery, casual murder, infanticide, sexual abuse of all flavours, and all the rest. I guess the question is whether religious texts should be exempt from content warnings, in which case one should expect films like “The Passion of the Christ” to be available for general audiences, not R.
- Evil_Saint 1y ago
  Exempting religious content makes no sense in any context to me. It's all human generated content.
- ajross 1y ago
  Hm... that seems strained. The film got an R because of visible blood/gore scenes and violence. There's nothing controversial about that at all, swap the script with an explicitly atheist one that rejects the divinity of Christ and crucifies a 100% mortal man in exactly the same way and you'd get an obvious R, because crucifixion is a violent act absent of any context. And if you really want to go with the old testament having NSFW themes in its text (which it does), that seems like a frightenly slippery slope. If slavery and genocide are verboten, are you going to rule out Uncle Tom's Cabin or the Diary of Anne Frank too? History textbooks? Where does it stop? I suspect your response is going to be that you think the bible is treating those subjects in an inappropriate way. Which is to say, you think it's a Bad Book and want to censor it for its meaning, not its content. I mean, I happen to agree that it's a bad book. But... yikes, as it were. No, we don't do that.
  - madaxe_again 1y ago
    Neither uncle tom’s cabin nor the diary of Anne Frank advocated slavery nor genocide. I don’t think anything should be outright censored - but I also don’t think that “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”, or The Levite’s Concubine, for instance, is necessarily something you want to spring on people, and if we’re going to do content warnings - and as a culture we do - we should be consistent.
2378369327632 1y ago
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burnto 1y ago
I know it’s not the stated reason for the flag, but maybe it’s ok to see a little bias towards atheism here and there.
- rootusrootus 1y ago
  As much antipathy as I have for religion, I disagree wholeheartedly. Bias in any form just enables rationalizing a counter-bias. And frankly, the folks who do exactly that sort of counter-bias today are very good at it. We should be careful about giving them more ammo, this tit-for-tat is tearing us apart.
  - nish__ 1y ago
    So true. There are entire libraries that only include books that have been made illegal by various states across the world. People are naturally attracted to taboos and this will only draw more attention to the bible.
  - rvitorper 1y ago
    Amen, brother
  - bediger4000 1y ago
    I understand what you're saying but just like "absolute freedom of speech", the ratchet only works one direction. In fact you identified it as really good counter bias. It's analogous to Overton Window always opening to the right. You've hit on a good point, but I don't know what to do about it.
- duxup 1y ago
  "It's ok when it is my bias" doesn't make it ok.
deleted 1y ago
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timnetworks 1y ago
unless I am misunderstanding, this would allow you to hide the app from sharing settings, so that others don't see you are e.g. reading the quran (where otherwise they may have not known) and has nothing to do with whether or not you have a job where you e.g. work.
- TheTaytay 1y ago
  It also hides these apps from the search by default unless you enable the NSFW filter.
  - seivan 1y ago
    Right, I wonder what else is under NSFW. Are they really forcing users to enable NSFW which includes actual smut, in order to get a bible app? This is malicious.
nurettin 1y ago
Before the topic is ironically flagged, I guess it is time to have "the talk". Although you can construct peaceful narratives from both books, and most people are trying to do that, and I commend and appreciate their efforts immensely, fact of the matter is: you are swimming up the current. The societies depicted in them were highly disturbed, warring tribes. The lessons from stories were harsh, often bordering on sadism. Pretty much everyone grew up with trauma if they survived. Although you can find little nuggets of wisdom here and there about being humble and patient and not getting on a high horse, calling these books key to the universe is like pushing a camel through a needle hole. Now should people mark "holy" book apps unsafe? maybe, but it isn't going to save children from being exposed. It will just disturb well meaning people and enrage the not so nice ones.
- throw9374468 1y ago
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- peterangular 1y ago
  Totally agreed. Anecdotal, but actually reading the Bible, linear + cover to cover, was one of biggest reasons I became an atheist.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  The bible is a long introduction to the punchline, that the highest entity rather gets himself killed, then raising the hand against anyone, and that it wants everyone to be like that. > is like pushing a camel through a needle hole I see what you did there...
  - Hizonner 1y ago
    > the highest entity rather gets himself killed, then raising the hand against anyone Well, after personally destroying some cities, cursing an entire civilization with plagues including the death of their firstborn, and ordering the "chosen people" to take over some land by slaughtering everybody living there. And the "getting killed" part didn't remove the threat of eternal fire for anybody who doesn't go along with the program. That's the big stuff I remember off the top of my head. You have to ignore a lot of stuff in both testaments to get to where you're trying to go.
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mouse_ 1y ago
This should have been the end of it. > The current NSFW anti-feature definition is listed here: Anti-Features | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository and copied below for reference: > This Anti-Feature is applied to an app that contains content that the user may not want to be publicized or visible everywhere. The marked app may contain nudity, profanity, slurs, violence, intense sexuality, political incorrectness, or other potentially disturbing subject matter. This is especially relevant in environments like workplaces, schools, religious and family settings. The name comes from the Internet term “Not safe for work”. > The key words here are the user. Apps should only be assigned this anti-feature if the app contains content that the user may not want publicized or visible elsewhere. Most, if not all users of Bible apps would indeed want the content of the apps to be publicized and visible elsewhere, so this anti-feature should not apply to Bible apps according to this definition.
- deleted 1y ago
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nish__ 1y ago
Time for an f-droid competitor? The UI is outdated anyways.
- bjoli 1y ago
  Outdated maybe, but still quite functional. What is your issue with it? if people find the UI so bad, wouldnt it be easier to try to push an updated UI than getting all the infrastructure and everything going?
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  Which UI? f-droid has many frontends, with wildly varying design sensibilities and approaches.
  - nish__ 1y ago
    Huh, I didn't know that. Thanks.
deleted 1y ago
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moron4hire 1y ago
F-Droid "Anti-Feature flags" are not block lists. They are for users to filter content. The content is still available. >> When reviewing apps to accept, F-Droid takes the user’s point of view, first and foremost. We start with strict acceptance criteria based on the principles of free software and user control. There are some things about an app that might not block it from inclusion, but many users might not want to accept them. For these kinds of things, F-Droid has a defined set of Anti-Features. Apps can then be marked with these Anti-Features so users can clearly choose whether the app is still acceptable. >> Anti-Features are organized into “flags” that packagers can use to mark apps, warning of possibly undesirable behaviour from the user’s perspective, often serving the interest of the developer or a third party. Free software packages do not exist in a bubble. For one piece of software to be useful, it usually has to integrate with some other software. Therefore, users that want free software also want to know if an app depends on or promotes any proprietary software. Sometimes, there are concepts in Anti-Features that overlap with tactics used by third parties against users. F-Droid always marks Anti-Features from the user’s point of view. For example, NSFW might be construed as similar to a censor’s blocklists, but in our case, the focus is on the user’s context and keeping the user in control. Emphasis mine.
- TheTaytay 1y ago
  This hides those apps from the search unless that user enables the NSFW filter. When seen through that lens, I can’t imagine the overlap of users who are searching for a Bible app and who also want to show NSFW apps with them. When seen through that lens, it doesn’t seem like this is a user-friendly decision or one that is taking the user in control or taking their context into account.
- infamia 1y ago
  F-Droid is no longer accepting "NSFW" apps (as they dubiously define them) and will eventually remove them from the repo. This tag is only a stopgap until they figure out how to move them out of the F-Droid repo.
  - baobun 1y ago
    https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252 Was not aware of this and it does put the flagging in a different light.
kazinator 1y ago
Generally speaking, only images/videos are NSFW-taggable. The argument can be made than an app which displays religious imagery is not suitable for the workplace, but if it's just a reader with texts, then not. If someone wants to spy over your shoulder to read text on your screen, and it doesn't jibe with their religion, that is their problem. And, if that's where the goalposts lie, then atheistic texts could be offensive in such a way. I.e. a Mastodon post claiming "there is no god" should be marked NSFW and blurred out until you click something.
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  There is a world outside the USA where most of what you wrote doesn’t apply. Here I think the labelling doesn’t really make sense but it never does anyway and pretty much means "this content is part of a corpus American think is objectionable and wouldn’t want to be seen with in public”. I enjoy the controversy for putting in light the usual imperial blindness however.
  - kazinator 1y ago
    Funny you should mention that because some draft of my comment did specify "North American workplace" but it got lost in some edit.
cvoss 1y ago
This is a very problematic choice and as much as I want to think it wasn't malicious, at every turn it sure looks like it's meant to be inflammatory. I can think of exactly one good reason to mark religious content as NSFW (under F-Droid's bizarre and very not normal definition of that word): To protect persons living in areas of the world where association with that religion is ruinous or outright dangerous due to persecution. Aside from that extreme outlier, this is very bad, to not only associate a censoring label to anybody's relgious text, but a label that accuses the text of being offensive in the name of not producing offense. Virtue-signaled sensitivity to users desires (as if that's a single, unified, knowable thing), "political incorrectness" and "religious... settings"? Yikes, so much irony. Anti-feature indeed. This whole matter is far outside the bounds of a software repository's domain of responsibility, and it's inappropriate for them to try.
- Hizonner 1y ago
  > label that accuses the text of being offensive Abrahamic religious texts, and a lot of others as well, are offensive. They clearly and directly glorify oppressive and/or genocidal violence in the past. There's a very strong argument that they demand similar violence in the present and future. They definitely demand a whole bunch of evil and oppressive social institutions. They're more offensive than hardcore porn. Any "believers" who claim they don't really mean what they say should get exactly as much consideration as people who claim hardcore porn doesn't really mean the sex. It's just that F-Droid shouldn't be in the business of caring what's "NSFW".
  - watwut 1y ago
    > They're more offensive than hardcore porn. No they are not. Not unless you are intentionally taking in super weird definition of "offensive" or "hardcore porn". And I am saying that as someone who is not Christian and finds a lot of what Christianity stands for off-putting or even unethical. There is a reason people who want quick individual fun go for porn and not for a bible.
    - greycol 1y ago
duxup 1y ago
Open source and stepping in to be a morality judge really seems like a difficult line to take.
mrcsharp 1y ago
One interesting quote I found in [1]: "Since we have been awarded funding from the OTF Sustainability grant to explore F-Droid policies, we have taken a look at some EU, UK and global content moderation regulations and guidelines to how it may impact F-Droid. The good news is that in almost all cases we are adhering to the guidelines and regulations, in that we do not have illegal, harmful or exploitative apps on the main repo. The exception being the handful of apps we have tagged NSFW." [1] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252#note_2578531026 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252#note_2578531026
drewbitt 1y ago
NSFW meaning "content that you may not want to view in public", is the Bible or Quran really that?
- mvdtnz 1y ago
  That's not what NSFW means in this context. > The marked app may contain nudity, profanity, slurs, violence, intense sexuality, political incorrectness, or other potentially disturbing subject matter.
  - mminer237 1y ago
    No, he was exactly right. That says "may" because it's just a comment, not F-Droid's actual definition, which you cut out: > This Anti-Feature is applied to an app that contains content that the user may not want to be publicized or visible everywhere. https://f-droid.org/docs/Anti-Features/#nsfw https://f-droid.org/docs/Anti-Features/#nsfw That is clearly not applicable to the vast majority of these apps' users as evidenced by their outrage.
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  Have you read it? Yes they are
  - nathanaldensr 1y ago
    Yes, I have read it, as have billions of others, and we don't agree with you. Your personal political sensibilities are not shared by all. For what it's worth I wouldn't flag any of your chosen religious texts either no matter what they were.
    - WolfeReader 1y ago
      Do you read Ezekiel chapter 23 at work and to your family?
      - BizarroLand 1y ago
ihaveone 1y ago
Clearly someone 'wants to do something controversial'. Pathetic. Carte blanc on anything using the word Bible is a telltale sign. A 'I've read these verses' tracker also banned, having contained none of what they object to. Violent video game descriptions not banned. Do it right or don't do it. It's simple.
snthpy 1y ago
Seems legit. These topics should not form any part of work or government. What you do in your own time is of course completely up to you, as with any other NSFW content.
- deleted 1y ago
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- cakeday 1y ago
  The US Constitution's First Amendment protects religion from government. There is no amendment protecting porn or gratuitous violence. Marking the religious apps as NSFW may be a violation of the First Amendment and could potentially be challenged in court, to a potentially huge sum of money and F-Droid's potential detriment.
  - Hizonner 1y ago
    The First Amendment does not apply to fucking app stores. It applies to the government and only to the government. That does include the government leaning on people, but it does not include editorial or curation decisions made by totally private organizations. If you tried to take your position to a court in the US, even now, you'd be treated as a frivolous litigant... which, to be clear, means being told to fuck off and not come back. Please stop posting this kind of ignorance. It burns.
    - fragmede 1y ago
      The Soviet Union had freedom of speech too. It's just that you didn't have freedom after the speech was the problem.
      - Hizonner 1y ago
        I honestly cannot figure out what you are trying to say here. I don't think you can either. Nobody is throwing anybody in prison, nor threatening to. One of the reasons the First Amendment applies only to the government is that, unlike an app store, it can throw people in prison.
deleted 1y ago
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squigz 1y ago
So... what's the big deal? Putting aside the various arguments whether religious texts should be marked as such, the wording of this policy, etc, etc... literally what difference does it make that these apps now have this flag? Do people think users will see this flag and be like, "Oh dear me I had no idea the Bible was NSFW; won't be reading that now!"? Just confused about the outrage.
- felurx 1y ago
  You have to enable a setting to see apps marked with that anti-feature when searching
  - asacrowflies 1y ago
    So it hurts their goal of evangelizing off of other people's volunteer infrastructure....so sad...anyway ..
- asacrowflies 1y ago
  [flagged]
4gotunameagain 1y ago
What is the funniest is that this is the action of a social justice warrior on a crusade, exhibiting the exact same behaviour he purports to be against.
- nathanaldensr 1y ago
  And after exhibiting said behavior, when you doth protest, they will call you the bigot (eventually).
- lern_too_spel 1y ago
  Consistency? How do you propose allowing smut and violence from some religions without allowing it from others? If there are existing rules, they should be applied consistently.
pndy 1y ago
Maybe I'm in the minority but I consider religious text books, prayer tracking/reading apps as the low-effort ones - doesn't matter which religion it is. These will eventually show up in the "store" in countless versions. But I get it at the same time - some people may want them on their devices. I'm more concerned in this case that NSFW section contains "political incorrectness". Who's going to decide here what's incorrect and what's not in some cases? A "committee" of experts on discord?
- ivmoreau 1y ago
  > Maybe I'm in the minority but I consider religious text books, prayer tracking/reading apps as the low-effort ones - doesn't matter which religion it is. These will eventually show up in the "store" in countless versions. I get what you are trying to say, but so far, there are actual real high-effort apps. Sefaria is my greatest example of that, since it tries not to be just a book reading app, but to visually show a graph of how text is related between translations, midrash and more commentary. But yeah, most are surely low-effort, I can't disagree on that.
- bigbadfeline 1y ago
  > Who's going to decide here what's incorrect and what's not in some cases? It's the same question as "Who watches the watchers?", I don't think a centralized architecture, like F-Droid or Android itself, can solve it. In this case PWAs appear to be a good option for that kind of content, if only we could make their installation and use as seamless as using the playstore. They might be on par with F-Droid, however.
- asacrowflies 1y ago
  Yeah I'm just glad this NSFW tag filters out all this junk.... The screenshot in the thread of all the Bible apps in search after toggling filter is actually funny.
kamikazechaser 1y ago
F-Droid are in the FA stage of FAFO. If they don't reverse this, they will find themselves in the FO stage. Anyone can hold the opinion that "religion or its texts are ruinous" but you can never apply it in practice in a liberal democracy (even in secular states) simply because religious and expression rights are legally protected. Don't moral police people especially on something that is as controversial as this.
- ta9000 1y ago
  [dead]
- numpad0 1y ago
  Or this could be the FO itself. Both the threshold for NSFW as well as anti-puritanism sentiment has crept up so high that it has reached "religion is a cancer" stage.
- Hizonner 1y ago
  > religious and expression rights are legally protected. What "liberal democracy" has laws that tell F-Droid that it has to carry any particular apps, or how it has to mark them, again? There are some places that like to call themselves "liberal democracies" and have "must not carry" laws, but that's as far as it goes (and, on edit, those don't generally aim at religious content). In fact I think you will probably find that there are no must-carry-religious-content laws anywhere, liberal or not. Even in utterly totalitarian states, the closest anything comes is rules that government spyware, or maybe propaganda, must be installed. The only "FO" that will or should happen to F-Droid is that it may lose more users and/or contributors one way than the other.
0dayz 1y ago
It's a bit jarring how obtuse a lot of people are in that thread, since two things can be true: - Religious books are not for kids - They aren't primarily written to be violent Instead it's more like a Mexican stand off, whoever first tries to be reasonable gets shot.
dvno42 1y ago
This seems reasonable. The content includes themes (death, rape, violence, etc) that are generally considered NSFW by most modern day rating agencies. Just because cultures have historically seeded the texts for a long period of time doesn't make them SFW. If ESRB/MPAA had to rate a modern reboot, I don't think it would get a T/PG-13. Personally, I wouldn't want my kids exposed to this kind of material without at least having a chance to talk to them about it first. Would you want your child getting sucked into something like Scientology without your knowledge?
- nathanaldensr 1y ago
  It's only reasonable if reason is applied, rather than one particular set of contributors' political sensibilities. Unfortunately, there is zero logical consistency in what is marked NSFW and what isn't. That's the entire problem. F-Droid's authoritarian moral-policing crew are coming up with any flimsy justification for censorship applied inconsistently rather than taking an objective look at the issue. Read the comments and you'll see their tone is clearly dismissive and condescending, not collaborative and "Hmm, I can see how maybe this line of policing is inconsistent." This is how this kind of political-bias-pretending-to-be-objectivity tends to unfold with religious adherents, which these F-Droid contributors seem to be.
  - daurentius523 1y ago
    "one particular set of contributors' political sensibilities." - the entire western world is now particular sets of political and ideological sensibilities. Why puritan christians always assume that theirs is somehow different of others and won't be subject to new puritanism? "Read the comments and you'll see their tone is clearly dismissive and condescending" - you think that way because you are biased to classify your religious text as not nsfw - but there is no such reason really - christianity is no longer main ideology of everyone.
- 48terry 1y ago
  Would you agree the Wikipedia app should be marked NSFW? It also contains a whole lot of objectionable stuff, often with pictures.
nilslindemann 1y ago
Freedom of religion is a fundamental right. Tagging a religious book or a reader of such as "NSFW" means, declaring it as "not normal". Declaring something, which is a fundamental right, as not normal, is discrimination.
- brettermeier 1y ago
  Religion is not normal and I don't want it, so well done.
- HK-NC 1y ago
  But religions are only normal once they have numbers, theres no judgement on the content. These cults just have to survive and thrive long enough to become normalised.
  - nilslindemann 1y ago
    You can see everything as a cult. Science, with its cultic belief that everything is a particle also just survived long enough to become normal. The question is, are members of one cult wise enough to accept other cults, or are they so insecure that they have to tag them with "NSFW"?
    - asacrowflies 1y ago
      Incorrect science proved and proves itself everyday thru trial and error. cause and effect. Hypothesis and expirment.... To hear it compared to "faith" is offensive and absurd.
      - nilslindemann 1y ago
        Science and Faith have different goals. Science figures out things, Faith helps those who are alone (And your ego hates this). Both are, in a neutral, scientific, sense, cults. Edit: I am a bit one-sided here. Faith also is a social glue (look e.g. at the Muslims), and it actively works for spiritual self determinism. At least Buddhism, Toltecism and Scientology do.
wazdra 1y ago
I think there's a large cultural bias at play here. Different nations have different relationships to religion. As a french person, the decision to mark religious content as NSFW seems totally normal to me, but I also know that french people are (often too) fierce atheists. I also understand things are different in many places, but I think the argument is too heated right now, maybe everyone needs to take a step back and think in a more "international" way? Someone in the linked thread suggested a new tag altogether for religious content, that might be a sound decision.
- scaryclam 1y ago
  I mean, unless you work at an organisation that deals with a specific religion, I would say that they're all NSFW, as there's no reason to be using them at work, and they're bound to cause controvosy at some point. Given the level of NSFW material in some of them (sex, violence, etc), I think it's not surprising they're getting labelled as such, even without the link to a religion.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 1y ago
  As a French person the decision seems abhorrent to me. Atheists in France are also in the minority by most measures.
doka_smoka 1y ago
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constantcrying 1y ago
Oh well. To be honest I was pretty disappointed that Google was going after them, but the writing seems to be on the wall. With behavior like this, I do not even want to use their software at all. Android has been going more and more to shit anyways. The best part was always that you could escape Google, but that option seems to be closing down.
colonial 1y ago
Insufferable r/atheism-tier behavior. I'm glad I don't rely on F-Droid for anything critical.
- nathanaldensr 1y ago
  Exactly, but if you say that you'll just be accused of yourself being a biased bigot, conveniently distracting from the original reason the discussion started at all! These psychological tactics don't work on people anymore.
deleted 1y ago
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WolfeReader 1y ago
To all the people being performatively upset by this, please clarify your position. Do you believe: 1. F-Droid and other software managers should not have special labels or handling for NSFW content. 2. F-Droid and other software managers SHOULD handle NSFW content, but the Bible does not contain this content (such as in Ezekiel chapter 23). 3. F-Droid should not consider religious texts to be NSFW even if they contain NSFW contents.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  > 2. F-Droid and other software managers SHOULD handle NSFW content, but the Bible does not contain this content (such as in Ezekiel chapter 23). Why pick out a tiny bit of Ezekiel when you have the entire book of Song of Solomon? Anyways, I think the more interesting tension is: What tag or flag would apply to the Bible that does not apply to the Wikipedia app? I have literally used Wikipedia to look up sex positions, which it covers in detail and with pictures.
  - 48terry 1y ago
    Yeah, like, there's straight-up photos of penises and vaginas and naked people of all sorts on Wikipedia. It absolutely should be considered a NSFW app.
- nh23423fefe 1y ago
  Performative ignorance is much more annoying
- watwut 1y ago
  My understanding of NSFW is that it means "not safe for work" and in the contexts I was in, bible was safe for work. I have yet to see an angry atheist demanding that bibles cant be seen on account of Ezekiel chapter 23 like content. As funny as gotcha of "bible contains stories about sexuality" is, back in real world, I have yet to meet someone who would equate it with erotics. And yes, you can talk about books and movies in which comparable scenes appear in work too.
lunias 1y ago
NSFW should mean something akin to Not Safe for Work lol. If you're going to use that tag at all, the tag should exist on pretty much anything that exists purely for entertainment value. I would argue that religious texts (as well as sexually explicit scientific articles) are not NSFW, but pretty much every game is.
- Hizonner 1y ago
  If you're sitting around reading the Bible when you should be working, why should your boss treat that as better than sitting around playing a game when you should be working? But originally "NSFW" was meant for stuff you might not want to do on your break. It is true that if you use that kind of definition, these particular apps aren't going to get you in trouble in most workplaces. The official F-Droid definition that people have been quoting is mostly like that too. But the popular definition of "NSFW" has drifted, so users will be confused... which is yet another reason that it's not a category an app repository should be trying to maintain.
  - lunias 1y ago
    Mostly agree, but some people do consult religious texts for work. It doesn't strike me as categorically NSFW, but I think you and I agree that that's the issue: the definition of the NSFW category. Going further, I think it's not possible to define in a way that makes everyone happy; it's not as unambiguous as say, 18+ content, so we should just omit it altogether and let people make up their own minds as to what is safe in their workplace.
    - Hizonner 1y ago
      > Mostly agree, but some people do consult religious texts for work. Well, sure, if you're a priest/rabbi/pastor/imam/whatever (why isn't there a generic word for this?), you're going to consult religious texts for work. And if you're a game critic, you'll play games for work. And if you work at Pornhub, you'll presumably watch porn for work. Normal jobs don't involve any of them. Presumably we're talking about the norm. > not as unambiguous as say, 18+ content I will not take the easy bait. I will not take the easy bait. I will not take the easy bait...
guilhas 1y ago
So we should expect them to NSFW all manga/anime reading/browsing apps. Clearly many hypersexualise women, possibly minors, normalize sexual abuse, violence, both text and visuals Probably all social client apps for their addictive characteristics, and unhealthy polarizing content, and generally mental health degrading. Including Facebook, Reddit, fediverse... Let's be real no one is going to read the bible by accident. It is much easier for a young person to find explicit content in Lemmy/fediverse apps

125 points by jtlebigot 1y ago

* "New Oklahoma schools superintendent rescinds mandate for Bible instruction in schools": https://apnews.com/article/oklahoma-schools-bible-mandate-superintendent-630b2f706731224a070d7fef6a35b7d8 https://apnews.com/article/oklahoma-schools-bible-mandate-su... (apnews.com/article/oklahoma-schools-bible-mandate-superintendent-630b2f706731224a070d7fef6a35b7d8) * "Want the Bible in public school classrooms? There's an app for that": https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/11/04/an-oklahoman-wants-ryan-walters-to-considering-a-free-bible-app-instead-of-spending-millions-on-athe/75570802007/ https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/11/04/an-oklahoman... (www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/11/04/an-oklahoman-wants-ryan-walters-to-considering-a-free-bible-app-instead-of-spending-millions-on-athe/75570802007/); https://archive.ph/14iDg https://archive.ph/14iDg

puppycodes 1y ago

Because they are?

general1465 1y ago
It is like red states in USA few years ago banning NSFW books from schools only to find out that Bible is NSFW too by every today metric. Why would it be surprising for them? I guess the never read the book they are preaching.

bigyabai 1y ago

The justification makes perfect sense. This Anti-Feature is applied to an app that contains content that the user may not want to be publicized or visible everywhere. The marked app may contain nudity, profanity, slurs, violence, intense sexuality, political incorrectness, or other potentially disturbing subject matter. This is especially relevant in environments like workplaces, schools, religious and family settings. The name comes from the Internet term “Not safe for work”.

giancarlostoro 1y ago
I feel like you didn't read the discussion at all? One of the apps does not contain any Bible verses, it is used to track which books, chapters and verses you've read.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Does it matter? F-Droid is a distributor, they're allowed to reject apps they consider controversial or outside their wheelhouse. The person who spoke up was correct, the ruling is consistent and the definition of NSFW content makes sense to me. Evangelism isn't exempted from being called and labelled as slopware. These people can perfectly well distribute their apps without F-Droid's help, they're not refusing to sign their app or somesuch.
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    It is not consistent, is the reddit app going to be removed next? It makes no sense. What about violent FPS games? Consistency would be that they in fact are removing everything that's NSFW.
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      The consistency is that the presence of a Reddit app or a Youtube app per se doesn't reveal too much about the device owner. A Bible reader/tracker app, a Quran learning app... now that's where you enter a more sensitive area, religious beliefs are among the higher protected classes of data under GDPR. And now there's a few potential threat sources: family members snooping through their relative's phones, border control snooping through phones (remember, apostasy is a crime punishable by death in some Muslim countries), or the worst one, random ad SDKs pulling in and distributing lists of installed APKs and pushing these to the mothership, where the data can then be hoovered up by anyone willing to pay for it, with the same result [1]. I wish I didn't need to write this, but it's not just some random Middle East theocracy going for its citizens as usual for the crime of not believing into the god of choice, we're seeing people being threatened for their faith (or lack of it) right in the United States of America, right now. [1] https://theintercept.com/2025/05/22/intel-agencies-buying-data-portal-privacy/ https://theintercept.com/2025/05/22/intel-agencies-buying-da...

pclmulqdq 1y ago

[flagged]

nish__ 1y ago
[flagged]
dang 1y ago
Don't take HN threads into religious flamewar please. Last thing we need here.
- pclmulqdq 1y ago
  I honestly meant this in a "no religion in the office" sense, but people started responding with bible quotes.
  - dang 1y ago
    I believe you that you didn't mean it as a generic religious flamestarter, but in that case your intent didn't come across in the comment. So it's predictable that people responded with flaming reactions of their own. This may be helpful for avoiding this sort of outcome in the future: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=burden%20disambiguate%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

inglor 1y ago

Discussion of the merge request to mark it as nsfw https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/27861 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/27861 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252 Edit - found more context: https://f-droid.org/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html https://f-droid.org/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409794 I still don't get it to be honest.

giancarlostoro 1y ago
If it wasn't for the fact that they totally only targeted Bible apps and ignored things like reddit when doing this I would say its just an honest mistake, but they only seemingly marked Bible related apps. In one instance the developers app isn't even an app that contains the Bible, its a Bible reading tracker so you can keep track of which verses you have read thus far, still marked NSFW. There was not enough thought put into this ban and it only seems to target one demographic of apps.
- inglor 1y ago
  They seem to disagree https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/27861#note_2830235219 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/27861#... > We don't flag general apps, e.g., ebook readers and browsers. But bible readers are not general apps. They are designed to read bible and there are NSFW contents in bible. Honestly I think their argument is pretty weak, especially since like you said in this case it was a bible reading tracker.
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    Again though, one of the apps has NONE of the Bible content, it is only "I've read Genesis 1:1" type of stuff, it is to track what you've read... As pointed out in the PR... there's violent games with NSFW descriptions that were not flagged. The fact they're ignoring so much is what makes me think this has nothing to do with NSFW content removal.

autoexec 1y ago

If they insist on flagging things as NSFW then this would be the correct action for those apps that contain the texts. It seems like apps that are bible related and don't contain the text are being flagged though which should be fixed.

giancarlostoro 1y ago
This is my issue with it as well, but also, why did the PR only target Bible apps? Seemingly in a very lazy way at that. Had they taken time to understand how each app works and its purpose, they would have only flagged apps that contain the Bible itself. I would hope reddit and other apps that actually contain graphic NSFW content are next?
- mvdtnz 1y ago
  The only merge request you've seen targets bible apps. How do you know this isn't one part of a larger effort to correctly mark apps? Maybe they've tackled other categories previously, or had intended to tackle other categories going forward. The fact that bible apps is included in one wave of markings doesn't mean only bible apps are affected.
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    Other examples were provided in the PR, I see no other PRs. Why was the PR only focused on them? I doubt we'll see additional PRs for other apps.
grapesodaaaaa 1y ago
Totally agree. They should be flagged 18+ and required ID verification if we want to play on a level field.
- Hizonner 1y ago
  How about "a small, strapped project that can use all the friends it can get shouldn't be wasting time on maintaining irrelevant metadata"? Not having categories like "NSFW" would be a nice level playing field.

madaxe_again 1y ago

I mean, yes, these are religious texts, but if we are to judge them on a level with other content, they absolutely warrant a warning. The abrahamic religious texts intersect largely around the Old Testament, which is a smorgasbord of genocide, slavery, casual murder, infanticide, sexual abuse of all flavours, and all the rest. I guess the question is whether religious texts should be exempt from content warnings, in which case one should expect films like “The Passion of the Christ” to be available for general audiences, not R.

Evil_Saint 1y ago
Exempting religious content makes no sense in any context to me. It's all human generated content.
ajross 1y ago
Hm... that seems strained. The film got an R because of visible blood/gore scenes and violence. There's nothing controversial about that at all, swap the script with an explicitly atheist one that rejects the divinity of Christ and crucifies a 100% mortal man in exactly the same way and you'd get an obvious R, because crucifixion is a violent act absent of any context. And if you really want to go with the old testament having NSFW themes in its text (which it does), that seems like a frightenly slippery slope. If slavery and genocide are verboten, are you going to rule out Uncle Tom's Cabin or the Diary of Anne Frank too? History textbooks? Where does it stop? I suspect your response is going to be that you think the bible is treating those subjects in an inappropriate way. Which is to say, you think it's a Bad Book and want to censor it for its meaning, not its content. I mean, I happen to agree that it's a bad book. But... yikes, as it were. No, we don't do that.
- madaxe_again 1y ago
  Neither uncle tom’s cabin nor the diary of Anne Frank advocated slavery nor genocide. I don’t think anything should be outright censored - but I also don’t think that “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”, or The Levite’s Concubine, for instance, is necessarily something you want to spring on people, and if we’re going to do content warnings - and as a culture we do - we should be consistent.

2378369327632 1y ago

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burnto 1y ago

I know it’s not the stated reason for the flag, but maybe it’s ok to see a little bias towards atheism here and there.

rootusrootus 1y ago
As much antipathy as I have for religion, I disagree wholeheartedly. Bias in any form just enables rationalizing a counter-bias. And frankly, the folks who do exactly that sort of counter-bias today are very good at it. We should be careful about giving them more ammo, this tit-for-tat is tearing us apart.
- nish__ 1y ago
  So true. There are entire libraries that only include books that have been made illegal by various states across the world. People are naturally attracted to taboos and this will only draw more attention to the bible.
- rvitorper 1y ago
  Amen, brother
- bediger4000 1y ago
  I understand what you're saying but just like "absolute freedom of speech", the ratchet only works one direction. In fact you identified it as really good counter bias. It's analogous to Overton Window always opening to the right. You've hit on a good point, but I don't know what to do about it.
duxup 1y ago
"It's ok when it is my bias" doesn't make it ok.

deleted 1y ago

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timnetworks 1y ago

unless I am misunderstanding, this would allow you to hide the app from sharing settings, so that others don't see you are e.g. reading the quran (where otherwise they may have not known) and has nothing to do with whether or not you have a job where you e.g. work.

TheTaytay 1y ago
It also hides these apps from the search by default unless you enable the NSFW filter.
- seivan 1y ago
  Right, I wonder what else is under NSFW. Are they really forcing users to enable NSFW which includes actual smut, in order to get a bible app? This is malicious.

nurettin 1y ago

Before the topic is ironically flagged, I guess it is time to have "the talk". Although you can construct peaceful narratives from both books, and most people are trying to do that, and I commend and appreciate their efforts immensely, fact of the matter is: you are swimming up the current. The societies depicted in them were highly disturbed, warring tribes. The lessons from stories were harsh, often bordering on sadism. Pretty much everyone grew up with trauma if they survived. Although you can find little nuggets of wisdom here and there about being humble and patient and not getting on a high horse, calling these books key to the universe is like pushing a camel through a needle hole. Now should people mark "holy" book apps unsafe? maybe, but it isn't going to save children from being exposed. It will just disturb well meaning people and enrage the not so nice ones.

throw9374468 1y ago
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peterangular 1y ago
Totally agreed. Anecdotal, but actually reading the Bible, linear + cover to cover, was one of biggest reasons I became an atheist.
1718627440 1y ago
The bible is a long introduction to the punchline, that the highest entity rather gets himself killed, then raising the hand against anyone, and that it wants everyone to be like that. > is like pushing a camel through a needle hole I see what you did there...
- Hizonner 1y ago
  > the highest entity rather gets himself killed, then raising the hand against anyone Well, after personally destroying some cities, cursing an entire civilization with plagues including the death of their firstborn, and ordering the "chosen people" to take over some land by slaughtering everybody living there. And the "getting killed" part didn't remove the threat of eternal fire for anybody who doesn't go along with the program. That's the big stuff I remember off the top of my head. You have to ignore a lot of stuff in both testaments to get to where you're trying to go.

deleted 1y ago

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mouse_ 1y ago

This should have been the end of it. > The current NSFW anti-feature definition is listed here: Anti-Features | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository and copied below for reference: > This Anti-Feature is applied to an app that contains content that the user may not want to be publicized or visible everywhere. The marked app may contain nudity, profanity, slurs, violence, intense sexuality, political incorrectness, or other potentially disturbing subject matter. This is especially relevant in environments like workplaces, schools, religious and family settings. The name comes from the Internet term “Not safe for work”. > The key words here are the user. Apps should only be assigned this anti-feature if the app contains content that the user may not want publicized or visible elsewhere. Most, if not all users of Bible apps would indeed want the content of the apps to be publicized and visible elsewhere, so this anti-feature should not apply to Bible apps according to this definition.

deleted 1y ago
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nish__ 1y ago

Time for an f-droid competitor? The UI is outdated anyways.

bjoli 1y ago
Outdated maybe, but still quite functional. What is your issue with it? if people find the UI so bad, wouldnt it be easier to try to push an updated UI than getting all the infrastructure and everything going?
yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
Which UI? f-droid has many frontends, with wildly varying design sensibilities and approaches.
- nish__ 1y ago
  Huh, I didn't know that. Thanks.

deleted 1y ago

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moron4hire 1y ago

F-Droid "Anti-Feature flags" are not block lists. They are for users to filter content. The content is still available. >> When reviewing apps to accept, F-Droid takes the user’s point of view, first and foremost. We start with strict acceptance criteria based on the principles of free software and user control. There are some things about an app that might not block it from inclusion, but many users might not want to accept them. For these kinds of things, F-Droid has a defined set of Anti-Features. Apps can then be marked with these Anti-Features so users can clearly choose whether the app is still acceptable. >> Anti-Features are organized into “flags” that packagers can use to mark apps, warning of possibly undesirable behaviour from the user’s perspective, often serving the interest of the developer or a third party. Free software packages do not exist in a bubble. For one piece of software to be useful, it usually has to integrate with some other software. Therefore, users that want free software also want to know if an app depends on or promotes any proprietary software. Sometimes, there are concepts in Anti-Features that overlap with tactics used by third parties against users. F-Droid always marks Anti-Features from the user’s point of view. For example, NSFW might be construed as similar to a censor’s blocklists, but in our case, the focus is on the user’s context and keeping the user in control. Emphasis mine.

TheTaytay 1y ago
This hides those apps from the search unless that user enables the NSFW filter. When seen through that lens, I can’t imagine the overlap of users who are searching for a Bible app and who also want to show NSFW apps with them. When seen through that lens, it doesn’t seem like this is a user-friendly decision or one that is taking the user in control or taking their context into account.
infamia 1y ago
F-Droid is no longer accepting "NSFW" apps (as they dubiously define them) and will eventually remove them from the repo. This tag is only a stopgap until they figure out how to move them out of the F-Droid repo.
- baobun 1y ago
  https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252 Was not aware of this and it does put the flagging in a different light.

kazinator 1y ago

Generally speaking, only images/videos are NSFW-taggable. The argument can be made than an app which displays religious imagery is not suitable for the workplace, but if it's just a reader with texts, then not. If someone wants to spy over your shoulder to read text on your screen, and it doesn't jibe with their religion, that is their problem. And, if that's where the goalposts lie, then atheistic texts could be offensive in such a way. I.e. a Mastodon post claiming "there is no god" should be marked NSFW and blurred out until you click something.

StopDisinfo910 1y ago
There is a world outside the USA where most of what you wrote doesn’t apply. Here I think the labelling doesn’t really make sense but it never does anyway and pretty much means "this content is part of a corpus American think is objectionable and wouldn’t want to be seen with in public”. I enjoy the controversy for putting in light the usual imperial blindness however.
- kazinator 1y ago
  Funny you should mention that because some draft of my comment did specify "North American workplace" but it got lost in some edit.

cvoss 1y ago

This is a very problematic choice and as much as I want to think it wasn't malicious, at every turn it sure looks like it's meant to be inflammatory. I can think of exactly one good reason to mark religious content as NSFW (under F-Droid's bizarre and very not normal definition of that word): To protect persons living in areas of the world where association with that religion is ruinous or outright dangerous due to persecution. Aside from that extreme outlier, this is very bad, to not only associate a censoring label to anybody's relgious text, but a label that accuses the text of being offensive in the name of not producing offense. Virtue-signaled sensitivity to users desires (as if that's a single, unified, knowable thing), "political incorrectness" and "religious... settings"? Yikes, so much irony. Anti-feature indeed. This whole matter is far outside the bounds of a software repository's domain of responsibility, and it's inappropriate for them to try.

Hizonner 1y ago
> label that accuses the text of being offensive Abrahamic religious texts, and a lot of others as well, are offensive. They clearly and directly glorify oppressive and/or genocidal violence in the past. There's a very strong argument that they demand similar violence in the present and future. They definitely demand a whole bunch of evil and oppressive social institutions. They're more offensive than hardcore porn. Any "believers" who claim they don't really mean what they say should get exactly as much consideration as people who claim hardcore porn doesn't really mean the sex. It's just that F-Droid shouldn't be in the business of caring what's "NSFW".
- watwut 1y ago
  > They're more offensive than hardcore porn. No they are not. Not unless you are intentionally taking in super weird definition of "offensive" or "hardcore porn". And I am saying that as someone who is not Christian and finds a lot of what Christianity stands for off-putting or even unethical. There is a reason people who want quick individual fun go for porn and not for a bible.
  - greycol 1y ago

duxup 1y ago

Open source and stepping in to be a morality judge really seems like a difficult line to take.

mrcsharp 1y ago

One interesting quote I found in [1]: "Since we have been awarded funding from the OTF Sustainability grant to explore F-Droid policies, we have taken a look at some EU, UK and global content moderation regulations and guidelines to how it may impact F-Droid. The good news is that in almost all cases we are adhering to the guidelines and regulations, in that we do not have illegal, harmful or exploitative apps on the main repo. The exception being the handful of apps we have tagged NSFW." [1] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252#note_2578531026 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252#note_2578531026

drewbitt 1y ago

NSFW meaning "content that you may not want to view in public", is the Bible or Quran really that?

mvdtnz 1y ago
That's not what NSFW means in this context. > The marked app may contain nudity, profanity, slurs, violence, intense sexuality, political incorrectness, or other potentially disturbing subject matter.
- mminer237 1y ago
  No, he was exactly right. That says "may" because it's just a comment, not F-Droid's actual definition, which you cut out: > This Anti-Feature is applied to an app that contains content that the user may not want to be publicized or visible everywhere. https://f-droid.org/docs/Anti-Features/#nsfw https://f-droid.org/docs/Anti-Features/#nsfw That is clearly not applicable to the vast majority of these apps' users as evidenced by their outrage.
TiredOfLife 1y ago
Have you read it? Yes they are
- nathanaldensr 1y ago
  Yes, I have read it, as have billions of others, and we don't agree with you. Your personal political sensibilities are not shared by all. For what it's worth I wouldn't flag any of your chosen religious texts either no matter what they were.
  - WolfeReader 1y ago
    Do you read Ezekiel chapter 23 at work and to your family?
    - BizarroLand 1y ago

ihaveone 1y ago

Clearly someone 'wants to do something controversial'. Pathetic. Carte blanc on anything using the word Bible is a telltale sign. A 'I've read these verses' tracker also banned, having contained none of what they object to. Violent video game descriptions not banned. Do it right or don't do it. It's simple.

snthpy 1y ago

Seems legit. These topics should not form any part of work or government. What you do in your own time is of course completely up to you, as with any other NSFW content.

deleted 1y ago
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cakeday 1y ago
The US Constitution's First Amendment protects religion from government. There is no amendment protecting porn or gratuitous violence. Marking the religious apps as NSFW may be a violation of the First Amendment and could potentially be challenged in court, to a potentially huge sum of money and F-Droid's potential detriment.
- Hizonner 1y ago
  The First Amendment does not apply to fucking app stores. It applies to the government and only to the government. That does include the government leaning on people, but it does not include editorial or curation decisions made by totally private organizations. If you tried to take your position to a court in the US, even now, you'd be treated as a frivolous litigant... which, to be clear, means being told to fuck off and not come back. Please stop posting this kind of ignorance. It burns.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    The Soviet Union had freedom of speech too. It's just that you didn't have freedom after the speech was the problem.
    - Hizonner 1y ago
      I honestly cannot figure out what you are trying to say here. I don't think you can either. Nobody is throwing anybody in prison, nor threatening to. One of the reasons the First Amendment applies only to the government is that, unlike an app store, it can throw people in prison.

deleted 1y ago

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squigz 1y ago

So... what's the big deal? Putting aside the various arguments whether religious texts should be marked as such, the wording of this policy, etc, etc... literally what difference does it make that these apps now have this flag? Do people think users will see this flag and be like, "Oh dear me I had no idea the Bible was NSFW; won't be reading that now!"? Just confused about the outrage.

felurx 1y ago
You have to enable a setting to see apps marked with that anti-feature when searching
- asacrowflies 1y ago
  So it hurts their goal of evangelizing off of other people's volunteer infrastructure....so sad...anyway ..
asacrowflies 1y ago
[flagged]

4gotunameagain 1y ago

What is the funniest is that this is the action of a social justice warrior on a crusade, exhibiting the exact same behaviour he purports to be against.

nathanaldensr 1y ago
And after exhibiting said behavior, when you doth protest, they will call you the bigot (eventually).
lern_too_spel 1y ago
Consistency? How do you propose allowing smut and violence from some religions without allowing it from others? If there are existing rules, they should be applied consistently.

pndy 1y ago

Maybe I'm in the minority but I consider religious text books, prayer tracking/reading apps as the low-effort ones - doesn't matter which religion it is. These will eventually show up in the "store" in countless versions. But I get it at the same time - some people may want them on their devices. I'm more concerned in this case that NSFW section contains "political incorrectness". Who's going to decide here what's incorrect and what's not in some cases? A "committee" of experts on discord?

ivmoreau 1y ago
> Maybe I'm in the minority but I consider religious text books, prayer tracking/reading apps as the low-effort ones - doesn't matter which religion it is. These will eventually show up in the "store" in countless versions. I get what you are trying to say, but so far, there are actual real high-effort apps. Sefaria is my greatest example of that, since it tries not to be just a book reading app, but to visually show a graph of how text is related between translations, midrash and more commentary. But yeah, most are surely low-effort, I can't disagree on that.
bigbadfeline 1y ago
> Who's going to decide here what's incorrect and what's not in some cases? It's the same question as "Who watches the watchers?", I don't think a centralized architecture, like F-Droid or Android itself, can solve it. In this case PWAs appear to be a good option for that kind of content, if only we could make their installation and use as seamless as using the playstore. They might be on par with F-Droid, however.
asacrowflies 1y ago
Yeah I'm just glad this NSFW tag filters out all this junk.... The screenshot in the thread of all the Bible apps in search after toggling filter is actually funny.

kamikazechaser 1y ago

F-Droid are in the FA stage of FAFO. If they don't reverse this, they will find themselves in the FO stage. Anyone can hold the opinion that "religion or its texts are ruinous" but you can never apply it in practice in a liberal democracy (even in secular states) simply because religious and expression rights are legally protected. Don't moral police people especially on something that is as controversial as this.

ta9000 1y ago
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numpad0 1y ago
Or this could be the FO itself. Both the threshold for NSFW as well as anti-puritanism sentiment has crept up so high that it has reached "religion is a cancer" stage.
Hizonner 1y ago
> religious and expression rights are legally protected. What "liberal democracy" has laws that tell F-Droid that it has to carry any particular apps, or how it has to mark them, again? There are some places that like to call themselves "liberal democracies" and have "must not carry" laws, but that's as far as it goes (and, on edit, those don't generally aim at religious content). In fact I think you will probably find that there are no must-carry-religious-content laws anywhere, liberal or not. Even in utterly totalitarian states, the closest anything comes is rules that government spyware, or maybe propaganda, must be installed. The only "FO" that will or should happen to F-Droid is that it may lose more users and/or contributors one way than the other.

0dayz 1y ago

It's a bit jarring how obtuse a lot of people are in that thread, since two things can be true: - Religious books are not for kids - They aren't primarily written to be violent Instead it's more like a Mexican stand off, whoever first tries to be reasonable gets shot.

dvno42 1y ago

This seems reasonable. The content includes themes (death, rape, violence, etc) that are generally considered NSFW by most modern day rating agencies. Just because cultures have historically seeded the texts for a long period of time doesn't make them SFW. If ESRB/MPAA had to rate a modern reboot, I don't think it would get a T/PG-13. Personally, I wouldn't want my kids exposed to this kind of material without at least having a chance to talk to them about it first. Would you want your child getting sucked into something like Scientology without your knowledge?

nathanaldensr 1y ago
It's only reasonable if reason is applied, rather than one particular set of contributors' political sensibilities. Unfortunately, there is zero logical consistency in what is marked NSFW and what isn't. That's the entire problem. F-Droid's authoritarian moral-policing crew are coming up with any flimsy justification for censorship applied inconsistently rather than taking an objective look at the issue. Read the comments and you'll see their tone is clearly dismissive and condescending, not collaborative and "Hmm, I can see how maybe this line of policing is inconsistent." This is how this kind of political-bias-pretending-to-be-objectivity tends to unfold with religious adherents, which these F-Droid contributors seem to be.
- daurentius523 1y ago
  "one particular set of contributors' political sensibilities." - the entire western world is now particular sets of political and ideological sensibilities. Why puritan christians always assume that theirs is somehow different of others and won't be subject to new puritanism? "Read the comments and you'll see their tone is clearly dismissive and condescending" - you think that way because you are biased to classify your religious text as not nsfw - but there is no such reason really - christianity is no longer main ideology of everyone.
48terry 1y ago
Would you agree the Wikipedia app should be marked NSFW? It also contains a whole lot of objectionable stuff, often with pictures.

nilslindemann 1y ago

Freedom of religion is a fundamental right. Tagging a religious book or a reader of such as "NSFW" means, declaring it as "not normal". Declaring something, which is a fundamental right, as not normal, is discrimination.

brettermeier 1y ago
Religion is not normal and I don't want it, so well done.
HK-NC 1y ago
But religions are only normal once they have numbers, theres no judgement on the content. These cults just have to survive and thrive long enough to become normalised.
- nilslindemann 1y ago
  You can see everything as a cult. Science, with its cultic belief that everything is a particle also just survived long enough to become normal. The question is, are members of one cult wise enough to accept other cults, or are they so insecure that they have to tag them with "NSFW"?
  - asacrowflies 1y ago
    Incorrect science proved and proves itself everyday thru trial and error. cause and effect. Hypothesis and expirment.... To hear it compared to "faith" is offensive and absurd.
    - nilslindemann 1y ago
      Science and Faith have different goals. Science figures out things, Faith helps those who are alone (And your ego hates this). Both are, in a neutral, scientific, sense, cults. Edit: I am a bit one-sided here. Faith also is a social glue (look e.g. at the Muslims), and it actively works for spiritual self determinism. At least Buddhism, Toltecism and Scientology do.

wazdra 1y ago

I think there's a large cultural bias at play here. Different nations have different relationships to religion. As a french person, the decision to mark religious content as NSFW seems totally normal to me, but I also know that french people are (often too) fierce atheists. I also understand things are different in many places, but I think the argument is too heated right now, maybe everyone needs to take a step back and think in a more "international" way? Someone in the linked thread suggested a new tag altogether for religious content, that might be a sound decision.

scaryclam 1y ago
I mean, unless you work at an organisation that deals with a specific religion, I would say that they're all NSFW, as there's no reason to be using them at work, and they're bound to cause controvosy at some point. Given the level of NSFW material in some of them (sex, violence, etc), I think it's not surprising they're getting labelled as such, even without the link to a religion.
ad404b8a372f2b9 1y ago
As a French person the decision seems abhorrent to me. Atheists in France are also in the minority by most measures.

doka_smoka 1y ago

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constantcrying 1y ago

Oh well. To be honest I was pretty disappointed that Google was going after them, but the writing seems to be on the wall. With behavior like this, I do not even want to use their software at all. Android has been going more and more to shit anyways. The best part was always that you could escape Google, but that option seems to be closing down.

colonial 1y ago

Insufferable r/atheism-tier behavior. I'm glad I don't rely on F-Droid for anything critical.

nathanaldensr 1y ago
Exactly, but if you say that you'll just be accused of yourself being a biased bigot, conveniently distracting from the original reason the discussion started at all! These psychological tactics don't work on people anymore.

deleted 1y ago

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WolfeReader 1y ago

To all the people being performatively upset by this, please clarify your position. Do you believe: 1. F-Droid and other software managers should not have special labels or handling for NSFW content. 2. F-Droid and other software managers SHOULD handle NSFW content, but the Bible does not contain this content (such as in Ezekiel chapter 23). 3. F-Droid should not consider religious texts to be NSFW even if they contain NSFW contents.

yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
> 2. F-Droid and other software managers SHOULD handle NSFW content, but the Bible does not contain this content (such as in Ezekiel chapter 23). Why pick out a tiny bit of Ezekiel when you have the entire book of Song of Solomon? Anyways, I think the more interesting tension is: What tag or flag would apply to the Bible that does not apply to the Wikipedia app? I have literally used Wikipedia to look up sex positions, which it covers in detail and with pictures.
- 48terry 1y ago
  Yeah, like, there's straight-up photos of penises and vaginas and naked people of all sorts on Wikipedia. It absolutely should be considered a NSFW app.
nh23423fefe 1y ago
Performative ignorance is much more annoying
watwut 1y ago
My understanding of NSFW is that it means "not safe for work" and in the contexts I was in, bible was safe for work. I have yet to see an angry atheist demanding that bibles cant be seen on account of Ezekiel chapter 23 like content. As funny as gotcha of "bible contains stories about sexuality" is, back in real world, I have yet to meet someone who would equate it with erotics. And yes, you can talk about books and movies in which comparable scenes appear in work too.

lunias 1y ago

NSFW should mean something akin to Not Safe for Work lol. If you're going to use that tag at all, the tag should exist on pretty much anything that exists purely for entertainment value. I would argue that religious texts (as well as sexually explicit scientific articles) are not NSFW, but pretty much every game is.

Hizonner 1y ago
If you're sitting around reading the Bible when you should be working, why should your boss treat that as better than sitting around playing a game when you should be working? But originally "NSFW" was meant for stuff you might not want to do on your break. It is true that if you use that kind of definition, these particular apps aren't going to get you in trouble in most workplaces. The official F-Droid definition that people have been quoting is mostly like that too. But the popular definition of "NSFW" has drifted, so users will be confused... which is yet another reason that it's not a category an app repository should be trying to maintain.
- lunias 1y ago
  Mostly agree, but some people do consult religious texts for work. It doesn't strike me as categorically NSFW, but I think you and I agree that that's the issue: the definition of the NSFW category. Going further, I think it's not possible to define in a way that makes everyone happy; it's not as unambiguous as say, 18+ content, so we should just omit it altogether and let people make up their own minds as to what is safe in their workplace.
  - Hizonner 1y ago
    > Mostly agree, but some people do consult religious texts for work. Well, sure, if you're a priest/rabbi/pastor/imam/whatever (why isn't there a generic word for this?), you're going to consult religious texts for work. And if you're a game critic, you'll play games for work. And if you work at Pornhub, you'll presumably watch porn for work. Normal jobs don't involve any of them. Presumably we're talking about the norm. > not as unambiguous as say, 18+ content I will not take the easy bait. I will not take the easy bait. I will not take the easy bait...

guilhas 1y ago

So we should expect them to NSFW all manga/anime reading/browsing apps. Clearly many hypersexualise women, possibly minors, normalize sexual abuse, violence, both text and visuals Probably all social client apps for their addictive characteristics, and unhealthy polarizing content, and generally mental health degrading. Including Facebook, Reddit, fediverse... Let's be real no one is going to read the bible by accident. It is much easier for a young person to find explicit content in Lemmy/fediverse apps