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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
> 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.
> If it wasn't for the fact that they totally only targeted Bible apps. ［...］ it only seems to target one demographic of apps.
Not true. Quran just as targeted as Bible.
> and ignored things like reddit
What do you mean with "ignored reddit"? There is no official reddit app on f-droid and community clients are flagged with the "depends on or promotes non-free network service" anti-feature.
An offline reading-tracking app being flagged sounds like one false positive that should be corrected, though. Have you tried submitting a PR for it?
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.
"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."
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.
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?
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.
Wait, F-Droid is doing/going to do age verification?
Guess I have to find another app store. To use and to donate to. Stupid wars over what's NSFW are ignorable, but knuckling under to the AV gestapo isn't.
Very few of those laws apply to services that only have "incidental" content, especially if they're small, and for those that actually do apply, the right answer is to refuse to serve the affected states.
They would definitely have to blacklist the UK as well. And other places if I remember right.
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
> The marked app may contain nudity, profanity, slurs, violence, intense sexuality, political incorrectness, or other potentially disturbing subject matter.
* "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)
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.
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.
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.
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!"?
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.
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.
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.
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”.
What Bible reader wants that fact hidden? That is the opposite sentiment of everyone I've actually seen. That honestly makes it seem even more illogical.
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.
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.
No, there are plenty of other examples (just in games alone) to write off as a mere one-off oversight. It certainly seems targeted since they've targeted religious apps that don't even have any explicit content.
For an app store that is supposed to advocate for freedom this is disturbing and very off-putting. The answer is not submitting a PR to enable even more censorship.
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.
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 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.
> 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.
> "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels". -- Matthew 25:41
That's supposed to be a quote from Jesus, personally. In fact he's talking about himself saying that in the future. See that word "everlasting"? Other translations use "eternal".
It's permanent Hell. It's really, really clear. He doesn't have to talk much about it, because he's made the point.
In my opinion this doesn't describe anything happening in this world, so it is not relevant, whether to label it NSFW, and it isn't encouraging you to be violent in this world.
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.
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.
Honestly, that feels like someone doing malicious compliance to jam up the nsfw ban. Of course by most standards that include written content the bible, quran etc. (and plenty of popular media series like a song of ice and fire) are nsfw, but the people pushing for age restriction/nsfw bans would usually strongly feel "except those ones" and by applying the label you force them to either explain or codify the double standard.
Oh that's disappointing. I have no issue with them flagging bible apps (it's just a flag and I welcome the ability to filter) but I do think nsfw content does belong in an open app ecosystem under the appropriate flagging. Including religion for those who subscribe to that.
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.
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.
Apart from anything else, the Song of Solomon (which I actually like!) or Ezekiel 23:20 would probably trigger some kind of automated detection system. Not to mention the legitimately horrible parts like Deuteronomy 22:23.
If you see this as the innocent equivalent of a “content warning,” then I would expect more apps to be flagged. The commenters in that thread point out numerous apps or games that are obviously built around content that is not appropriate for children.
Perhaps this is the only “think of the children” content warning they have, and therefore it seems odd when applied to religious texts. It’s like a movie rating system where there are only G and X ratings. If it’s not G, it gets lumped in with other stuff, including X-rated porn, and the only way to find it in our App Store is to allow for X-rated content.
Seems like a bug at best, but I think you’d have to be pretty naive to think this is an “aww shucks, rules are rules” application of some policy.
From an App Store rating perspective, this particularly affects children, which leads to a much more focused question:
Should minors have the right to install and use apps without parental approval that grant them access to content that is accepted to contain:
> genocide, slavery, casual murder, infanticide, sexual abuse
And if so, then what categories of apps are exempt from otherwise-mandatory content restriction processes for children? The Satanists no doubt stand ready to step in if anyone tries to disguise “exempt only Christian bible apps” under the cloak of “exempt all religious apps”, but shouldn’t this also exclude the Education category so that history and language students aren’t disadvantaged?
This change doesn’t much affect adults, though no doubt they will be leading the charges of complaint against it. It absolutely affects minors, though, who will encounter a higher bar of difficulty in studying religions or foreign languages or world history without explicit parental consent.
Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about that outcome, or any of this at all, but I wanted to make sure that an impacted group with little ability to speak for itself is recognized by those — by us all adults, specifically — who unilaterally compose and impose policies upon them.
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.
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.
Again, distinguishing "advocacy" as your criteria for censorship is censoring on interpretation. I know you are sincere in your opinions about this, they won't change, and I even share them.
They are still our opinions. We share the planet with people who think, equally inflexibly, that the bible does not advocate for slavery and genocide. And the way we do that without resorting to terrible violence (including slavery and genocide!) is by agreeing to disagree by not censoring each other.
But it does, and explicitly - it isn’t a matter of interpretation. Repeatedly god commands his followers to slaughter men, women, children, and even the animals of their foes. Repeatedly god tells his followers to enslave people, and that it’s fine to treat them abysmally as long as it’s not so bad that they die.
This isn’t my opinion of what the bible contains - any more than I could argue that Hellraiser is a cute movie about bunny rabbits.
The reality of what is in the bible is not, no. It is written, in black and white. Yes you could argue about gnostic gospels and shit but what people accept to be the Bible has been a static set of texts for centuries now.
Now, anyway, you need to stop talking smack about my mother, and I disliked the death threat you made just there, and I don’t need to know about what you do with fish in the bedroom.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The old testament has depiction of rape and violence. If the new testaments is also tagged nsfw though, I'll claim that their sensitivity is too high.
Obviously a man nailed to a cross is also pretty violent.
> 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".
Discussion of the merge request to mark it as nsfw https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/27861 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252
Edit - 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.
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.
They seem to disagree 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.
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.
A Penthouse reading tracker might get flagged NSFW too without much fanfare, even without any content from Penthouse.
> If it wasn't for the fact that they totally only targeted Bible apps. ［...］ it only seems to target one demographic of apps.
Not true. Quran just as targeted as Bible.
> and ignored things like reddit
What do you mean with "ignored reddit"? There is no official reddit app on f-droid and community clients are flagged with the "depends on or promotes non-free network service" anti-feature.
An offline reading-tracking app being flagged sounds like one false positive that should be corrected, though. Have you tried submitting a PR for it?
> still marked NSFW
"NSFW" is just the name of the F-Droid Anti-Feature, which is quite broad than what "not safe for work" implies:
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Totally agree. They should be flagged 18+ and required ID verification if we want to play on a level field.
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.
I’m not saying I agree with the rules, but we do have these categories requiring age verification now. They also seem to be arbitrarily applied.
I’m just advocating that violent texts like this should also be included rather than treated specially.
Wait, F-Droid is doing/going to do age verification?
Guess I have to find another app store. To use and to donate to. Stupid wars over what's NSFW are ignorable, but knuckling under to the AV gestapo isn't.
I’m not sure about f-droid specifically, but I know in the USA, 18+ content online is now required by law to have age verification in many states.
Very few of those laws apply to services that only have "incidental" content, especially if they're small, and for those that actually do apply, the right answer is to refuse to serve the affected states.
They would definitely have to blacklist the UK as well. And other places if I remember right.
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.
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.
Funny you should mention that because some draft of my comment did specify "North American workplace" but it got lost in some edit.
Open source and stepping in to be a morality judge really seems like a difficult line to take.
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?
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.
NSFW meaning "content that you may not want to view in public", is the Bible or Quran really that?
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.
Have you read it? Yes they are
* "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)
* "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
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.
"It's ok when it is my bias" doesn't make it ok.
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.
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.
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.
Amen, brother
Time for an f-droid competitor? The UI is outdated anyways.
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?
Because they are?
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.
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.
You have to enable a setting to see apps marked with that anti-feature when searching
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.
It also hides these apps from the search by default unless you enable the NSFW filter.
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.
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.
The justification makes perfect sense.
What Bible reader wants that fact hidden? That is the opposite sentiment of everyone I've actually seen. That honestly makes it seem even more illogical.
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.
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.
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.
Would you like to link to the reddit app or a violent FPS game not flagged as NSFW on F-droid? I don't believe either of those actually exists.
And again, nothing was removed from the store here, only marked as NSFW.
Gloomy Dungeons 2 is mentioned in the discussion as an FPS without the NSFW tag:
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/27861#...
The NSFW tag seems unevenly enforced, especially for an organization that is supposed to oppose censorship.
That looks like an oversight that could be addressed with a PR targeting that game.
No, there are plenty of other examples (just in games alone) to write off as a mere one-off oversight. It certainly seems targeted since they've targeted religious apps that don't even have any explicit content. For an app store that is supposed to advocate for freedom this is disturbing and very off-putting. The answer is not submitting a PR to enable even more censorship.
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-da...
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.
Totally agreed. Anecdotal, but actually reading the Bible, linear + cover to cover, was one of biggest reasons I became an atheist.
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...
> 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.
> the threat of eternal fire
Btw., the purificatorium is actually a bath (in Latin) and it's not eternal. Also Jesus isn't talking much about that.
> You have to ignore a lot of stuff in both testaments to get to where you're trying to go.
Yes. But it's still introduction and references for the punchline.
> "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels". -- Matthew 25:41
That's supposed to be a quote from Jesus, personally. In fact he's talking about himself saying that in the future. See that word "everlasting"? Other translations use "eternal".
It's permanent Hell. It's really, really clear. He doesn't have to talk much about it, because he's made the point.
[Edited to fix the chapter and verse]
Yes, I don't disagree with you here.
In my opinion this doesn't describe anything happening in this world, so it is not relevant, whether to label it NSFW, and it isn't encouraging you to be violent in this world.
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.
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.
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252
Was not aware of this and it does put the flagging in a different light.
Honestly, that feels like someone doing malicious compliance to jam up the nsfw ban. Of course by most standards that include written content the bible, quran etc. (and plenty of popular media series like a song of ice and fire) are nsfw, but the people pushing for age restriction/nsfw bans would usually strongly feel "except those ones" and by applying the label you force them to either explain or codify the double standard.
Oh that's disappointing. I have no issue with them flagging bible apps (it's just a flag and I welcome the ability to filter) but I do think nsfw content does belong in an open app ecosystem under the appropriate flagging. Including religion for those who subscribe to that.
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.
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.
Exempting religious content makes no sense in any context to me. It's all human generated content.
Apart from anything else, the Song of Solomon (which I actually like!) or Ezekiel 23:20 would probably trigger some kind of automated detection system. Not to mention the legitimately horrible parts like Deuteronomy 22:23.
If you see this as the innocent equivalent of a “content warning,” then I would expect more apps to be flagged. The commenters in that thread point out numerous apps or games that are obviously built around content that is not appropriate for children.
Perhaps this is the only “think of the children” content warning they have, and therefore it seems odd when applied to religious texts. It’s like a movie rating system where there are only G and X ratings. If it’s not G, it gets lumped in with other stuff, including X-rated porn, and the only way to find it in our App Store is to allow for X-rated content.
Seems like a bug at best, but I think you’d have to be pretty naive to think this is an “aww shucks, rules are rules” application of some policy.
From an App Store rating perspective, this particularly affects children, which leads to a much more focused question:
Should minors have the right to install and use apps without parental approval that grant them access to content that is accepted to contain:
> genocide, slavery, casual murder, infanticide, sexual abuse
And if so, then what categories of apps are exempt from otherwise-mandatory content restriction processes for children? The Satanists no doubt stand ready to step in if anyone tries to disguise “exempt only Christian bible apps” under the cloak of “exempt all religious apps”, but shouldn’t this also exclude the Education category so that history and language students aren’t disadvantaged?
This change doesn’t much affect adults, though no doubt they will be leading the charges of complaint against it. It absolutely affects minors, though, who will encounter a higher bar of difficulty in studying religions or foreign languages or world history without explicit parental consent.
Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about that outcome, or any of this at all, but I wanted to make sure that an impacted group with little ability to speak for itself is recognized by those — by us all adults, specifically — who unilaterally compose and impose policies upon them.
> Should minors have the right to install and use apps without parental approval that grant them access to content that is accepted to contain:
>> genocide, slavery, casual murder, infanticide, sexual abuse
Like wikipedia?
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.
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.
Again, distinguishing "advocacy" as your criteria for censorship is censoring on interpretation. I know you are sincere in your opinions about this, they won't change, and I even share them.
They are still our opinions. We share the planet with people who think, equally inflexibly, that the bible does not advocate for slavery and genocide. And the way we do that without resorting to terrible violence (including slavery and genocide!) is by agreeing to disagree by not censoring each other.
There is no reasonable reading of the bible which fits your narrative.
But it does, and explicitly - it isn’t a matter of interpretation. Repeatedly god commands his followers to slaughter men, women, children, and even the animals of their foes. Repeatedly god tells his followers to enslave people, and that it’s fine to treat them abysmally as long as it’s not so bad that they die.
This isn’t my opinion of what the bible contains - any more than I could argue that Hellraiser is a cute movie about bunny rabbits.
Not all facts are subjective.
"The bible is not a matter of interpretation" is literally, literally how you end up in religious wars. Seriously?
The reality of what is in the bible is not, no. It is written, in black and white. Yes you could argue about gnostic gospels and shit but what people accept to be the Bible has been a static set of texts for centuries now.
Now, anyway, you need to stop talking smack about my mother, and I disliked the death threat you made just there, and I don’t need to know about what you do with fish in the bedroom.