Censorship at F-Droid Forum

A few preliminary words of thanks: I appreciate the existence of F-Droid app store, and F-Droid forum. I even appreciate Licaon Kter's efforts in "curating" apps and "moderating" the forum.

TL;DR: F-Droid already has enough criticism and reputation for flawed processes, vulnerabilities, censorship, and biases. F-Droid organization should counter these criticisms by being more open, not less; and reducing censorship, and the influences of conflicts of interest, and personal biases. A wider review of these issues is suggested.

Background:

After "Community Engagement" input was requested for the June 27, 2024 Board of Directors meeting, on the F-Droid Forum, I added the following to the Etherpad:

It would be good for the board to look at censorship at f-droid forums, promoting DivestOS, and banning or going along with banning people in xmpp channels, by Licaon Kter. I represent opinionplatform.org, and have been censored and banned. I believe it is because I do not go along with promoting DivestOS.

Some time later, someone ("seabass"?) added:

Clarification: is this a forum ban appeal and/or a wider request?

F-Droid Forum Reference: https://forum.f-droid.org/t/board-of-directors-meeting-2024-06-27/26553 (link to archive.org)

When the July 18, 2024 Board of Directors meeting was announced in the forum, there was some discussion of the concern, and Licaon Kter stated:

opinionplatform got banned on some XMPP channels and this looked more like “a way to punish L_K by involving their employer”

F-Droid Forum Reference: https://forum.f-droid.org/t/board-of-directors-meeting-2024-07-18/26753 (link to archive.org)

The statement above by Licaon Kter is limited or selective memory, deflecting attention away from F-Droid forums, and avoiding examining wider issues of how F-Droid should handle interactions with, and discussions of, "alternative" Android OS projects like CalyxOS, DivestOS, /e/OS, GrapheneOS, and JaguarOS. It also minimizes Licaon Kter's support for, and involvement with app projects such as Conversations and DivestOS, and XMPP public discussion groups such as "Conversations" and "Conversations Offtopic", which Licaon Kter was "moderator" and "owner" of, respectively.

Response to Clarification Question: Although an account of mine was banned from F-Droid forum, and a post of mine was deleted, this is a "wider request". A few months ago, I created an account at F-Droid forum, and posted a brief comment in response to comments by someone else, "fraxeu", in the years long thread on DivestOS. My post comment was deleted by a moderator, and my account was banned. I subsequently created another forum account, and PM'd Licaon Kter to ask why the actions were taken. In my opinion, his response was nonsense, and there was no justification. In essence, Licaon Kter uses moderation power to censor relevant, on-topic comments, to defend or protect DivestOS from criticism.

So the question is: Does F-Droid want to be known as a site that only promotes operating systems and apps, or does F-Droid want to be known as a site that allows discussion of the good and bad, the pros and cons?

Such censorship actions are nothing new. Many promotional forums do similar things, including /e/OS aka E foundation forums, GrapheneOS forums, and more. I thought F-Droid forums were one of the few forums without such censorship, but I was wrong.

Additional Details:

"fraxeu" posted:

Hello there.
Last time I checked the project was developed by Tad.
Now the site says it was “maintained solely by Tavi since 2014”.
Shouldn’t it be addressed somewhere in the “news” or “about”? At first I thought there’s something wrong with my memory. Then I thought that developer changed. Now I think that probably something changed in developer.
But I’m still confused.

I wished to clarify, in a brief post for interested readers of the F-Droid forum: not only had the DivestOS developer, Tad/Tavi, changed names without explanation, but Tad/Tavi also caused deletion of a large amount of history of his related websites, spotco.us and divested.dev, from archive.org, also without explanation. Licaon Kter clearly felt such information should be suppressed, and used forum moderator censorship power to do so.

F-Droid forum post Reference, Post ~990 of 1075, by "fraxeu": https://forum.f-droid.org/t/divestos-long-term-device-support-with-enhanced-privacy-and-security/10105/1021 (link to archive.org)

Note: Post 990 is item 1021 in the URL. The mismatch indicates a large number of posts have been deleted from the thread. Some may be due to spam. Some are certainly due to censorship.

Indeed, as Licaon Kter stated, months later, "opinionplatform" was banned from an XMPP public discussion group owned and moderated by Licaon Kter. Licaon Kter, based on private messages there, was again comfortable with the censorship, and refused to do anything about it. That channel, the "Conversations Offtopic" channel, however, is known as a cesspool or "troll hole" of XMPP public channels. It is so bad, a developer and participant known as "singpolyma" asked for a link to it to be removed from official XMPP (XSF or xmpp.org) web pages. Is this the kind of discussion channel a representative of F-Droid should own and operate?

Licaon Kter is known to participate in the DivestOS XMPP channel, and is a user, supporter, defender and promoter of DivestOS, in case it is not obvious.

Suggestions for additional background on censorship, or anti-censorship at F-Droid: Search F-Droid forum for "censor". Censorship at F-Droid forum has been discussed several times over the years. At least a few well meaning people have expressed valid concerns. Next, search the F-Droid site. There are numerous apps in F-Droid's "curated" selection of apps intended to support "anti-censorship". The question is, does F-Droid want to be more known for supporting censorship, or for supporting anti-censorship?

A few words on related issues at F-Droid: I believe it is known among interested people that F-Droid has been accused of ad hoc or spur of the moment decision making, had some difficulties with communications and retaining volunteers and staff, and has some lack of open-ness when handling "admin" issues. I was not aware until recently that F-Droid was pursing partnership and sending "letters of support" for Android OS projects such as /e/OS (Murena). These are related issues or concerns.

F-Droid Gitlab issue references:

• Second funding opportunity with /e/ foundation (link to archive.org) and
• letter of support for "Murena Enterprise" (link to archive.org).

Conclusion

The F-Droid oversite board and management (Powers That Be at F-Droid) should, as requested, look at (and make policies regarding) censorship at F-Droid forum, and promoting DivestOS in particular and alternative Android OS in general. The activities of F-Droid representatives such as Licaon Kter in other public channels should also be reviewed.

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