Bible and Quran apps flagged NSFW by F-Droid
76 comments
·October 19, 2025inglor
giancarlostoro
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
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.
giancarlostoro
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.
cma
A Penthouse reading tracker might get flagged NSFW too without much fanfare, even without any content from Penthouse.
baobun
> 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?
ignoramous
> 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:
... nudity, profanity, slurs, violence, intense sexuality, political incorrectness, or other potentially disturbing subject matter ...autoexec
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.
grapesodaaaaa
Totally agree. They should be flagged 18+ and required ID verification if we want to play on a level field.
Hizonner
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.
grapesodaaaaa
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.
giancarlostoro
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?
mrcsharp
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
cvoss
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.
orwin
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.
lmz
Obviously a man nailed to a cross is also pretty violent.
Hizonner
> 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".
sipofwater
* "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
kazinator
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.
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duxup
Open source and stepping in to be a morality judge really seems like a difficult line to take.
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mouse_
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.
null
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.