alt Hacker NewsLet's consider the two possibilities here:
1. They have a policy of marking apps as NSFW if using them has a high probability of loading NSFW content onto the device. We can't easily rule this out. It's a small project so they have to be reserved about compliance issues because they don't have the resources to defend against expensive litigation and they could just be exercising an abundance of caution.
2. They're trolling Republicans with malicious compliance. They don't like the laws being enacted, they know the people enacting them like the Bible, so they apply the policy in the way which is maximally adversarial to the opponents imposing it on them. "If you don't like the consequences of your law then feel free to repeal it."
Which one of these is even objectionable? It seems like you want that if they're doing the second one they should admit to it, but in that case they're just maintaining kayfabe. The trolling is more effective when it's ambiguous. It's obvious that it could be that. If the message is to invite their opponents to go eat sand then it's not being lost in translation. But making that explicit only makes it easier to dismiss them as antagonists, or retaliate against them for being overtly defiant.
Whereas if they play it straight, what is someone going to say? That it shouldn't apply to this, right? Okay, then we need to pin down the rules for how exceptions work. Exceptions that could then be applied to other things. Which is to their advantage to have their opponents doing in this context because then they want the exceptions to be broad and reasonable instead of not caring if someone else is getting screwed by them.
> We can't easily rule this out. … they don't have the resources to defend against expensive litigation and they could just be exercising an abundance of caution.
If F-Droid were being cautious:
• They would have restricted social media apps, which a lot of public hysteria targets, which many of the new laws explicitly target, and which other app store providers like Google and Apple have already faced and continue to face massive financial and legal consequences over. If F-Droid is unwilling to take a stand against censorship, this would be an obvious step to begin shielding themselves from liability.
• They would not have prioritized blocking apps providing ancient religious texts, since there’s no public hysteria over Bible and Quran apps, none of the new laws explicitly target them, and no app store provider has faced consequence or threat of consequence over providing them.
• Once the policy was in place, they would not have reversed it simply after receiving angry comments.
I’m completely comfortable disbelieving F-Droid was ever actually concerned that religious apps could be a liability risk.
> They're trolling Republicans with malicious compliance. They don't like the laws being enacted, they know the people enacting them like the Bible, so they apply the policy in the way which is maximally adversarial to the opponents imposing it on them.
If the targets of their trolling (and I’m glad you agree, it is trolling) are legislators in backwards U.S. states, they hit far off the mark. The only people impacted by F-Droid’s censorship have been its users, who are (for the most part) members of the free software community. What’s the point of a troll that is unnoticed by your enemies and only harms your friends who already agree with you?
> "If you don't like the consequences of your law then feel free to repeal it."
In case you haven’t noticed, these laws are being passed everywhere from the UK to Brazil to Australia to Singapore to the EU. And yes, some U.S. states, too. So your “realpolitik” remark in another comment is similarly pointless, because those other politicians and regulators are also completely unaffected by F-Droid’s actions.
> Which one of these is even objectionable?
In response to a law saying F-Droid must punch some of its users in the face, F-Droid of its own volition decided to punch a different set of users in the face rather than refusing to punch anyone at all. I find that objectionable, and the flurry of comments they received shows others do too. Instead of taking principled actions or practical actions, F-Droid’s maintainers decided to take a swipe at users of religious apps on F-Droid, refused to explain themselves (“kayfabe,” as you called it), then upon receipt of unexpected blowback on their forums and issue trackers, backtracked and reversed the policy without further comment. It was a boneheaded move that drove away some app developers and some users like me. How can I trust them to not make some other boneheaded move in the future? Can you imagine Debian or OpenBSD doing such a thing? Now F-Droid has a big banner up top pointing to https://keepandroidopen.org/ and making themselves (noticeably, not other FOSS app stores) out to be the defenders of app freedom. It’s completely tone‐deaf and shows poor judgment. If current or future F-Droid leadership actually addressed the issue, I might be convinced to use it again. But I won’t hold my breath.