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Skipper 1y ago

Avoid downloading #android apps from F-Droid.

F-Droid is compromised and has censored apps for ideological reasons. They don't care about freedom or free speech. I'll write more on this topic later.

It's also not secure to get your apps from there, because all of them are signed by F-Droid – you’re adding a party you’ll have to trust, which isn’t ideal.

I only use F-Droid to find #FOSS apps that I would not have discovered otherwise. I recommend using Obtainium, which lets you install and update your apps directly from their source.

#privacy #cybersecurity #opsec

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Discussion

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cryptowolf 1y ago

source?

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btcmaniak 1y ago

Have to take a deep look on this...

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Low Information Voter 1y ago

Yeah, nah.

Obtainium's currently supported App sources:

Open Source - General:

GitHub

GitLab

Codeberg

F-Droid

Third Party F-Droid Repos

IzzyOnDroid

SourceForge

SourceHut

Other - General:

APKPure

Aptoide

Uptodown

APKMirror (Track-Only)

Huawei AppGallery

Jenkins Jobs

Open Source - App-Specific:

Mullvad

Signal

VLC

Other - App-Specific:

WhatsApp

Telegram App

Neutron Code

"HTML" (Fallback): Any other URL that returns an HTML page with links to APK files

There's more sketchiness there than on F-Droid, and a lot less automated testing.

Not doubting the reality of censorship on F-Droid, but they have a domain name and an address they don't want smashed in by Feds at 6am on a Friday.

App stores are custodial, and so are nearly all repositories. Git over Nostr would be a better start...

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DanConwayDev 1y ago

Apk's pgp signed by the developers and verified by obtanium would be nice. I has thought about adding a 'releases' section to https://gitworkshop.dev where maintainers could link to binaries signed with nostr keys vis nip93

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Late Night Blog 1y ago

I use both F-Droid and obtanium. Most of the drawbacks of F-Droid seem to be the same as any centralized repository so still use it.

Any examples on the censorship? You can add third party repos so it doesn't feel too locked down. But I may be missing details.

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Skipper 1y ago

I suggest you start with their statement.

https://f-droid.org/en/2019/07/16/statement.html

It's a classic case of the "woke mind virus" excuse to censor. The very same people who were advocating for software freedoms now "take a political stance" and ban social network clients from their platform because the network in question refuses to police its users.

https://reclaimthenet.org/f-droid-bans-gab-app

https://forum.f-droid.org/t/discouraged-by-f-droid-censorship/12017?page=2

They even starting censoring any discussions of the topic on their forum, and banning users because of it.

https://forum.f-droid.org/t/recent-events-on-the-forum/6724

There has also been a lot of drama recently surrounding their "board of directors", with members quitting or whatever.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231117190207/https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/446

Why does an Android FOSS repository even have a board of directors and community councils in the first place? How has it even come to this?

As I mentioned in the main post, F-Droid is compromised. There are too many humans in charge of things, and when they censored apps for ideological reasons, they opened a pandora's box. They cannot be trusted. Don't trust me either, do your own research.

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steepdawn974 1y ago

Obtainium ftw!

8f
Nëïgsëndöïg 1y ago

This may be QUITE late, but I do use Obtanium instead of F-Droid (or heaven forbid, Aurora Store without Google Play Services) nowadays. There are some apps known to be #FOSS on F-Droid, and if I can't find an app using Obtanium, I'll get it through F-Droid before Aurora.