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”.
It seems someone at F-Droid may have a political axe to grind with the current US presidency and the majority of the population of America who elected (1.)them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
In the "most literal" interpretation no. It's generally safe to read the Bible at work, (during times when reading anything non-work related is allowed).
* "New Oklahoma schools superintendent rescinds mandate for Bible instruction in schools": https://apnews.com/article/oklahoma-schools-bible-mandate-su... (apnews.com/article/oklahoma-schools-bible-mandate-superintendent-630b2f706731224a070d7fef6a35b7d8)
"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."
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.
55 comments
[ 8.3 ms ] story [ 90.9 ms ] threadEdit - found more context: https://f-droid.org/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409794
I still don't get it to be honest.
It seems someone at F-Droid may have a political axe to grind with the current US presidency and the majority of the population of America who elected (1.)them.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...
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.
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.
> 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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
Which is fine, but it is just NSFW.
Fundamentalism ?
* "Want the Bible in public school classrooms? There's an app for that": 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
"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
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.