Clarify 'Ads' anti-feature in documentation
Recently, discussions emerged at Organic Maps in several issues and PRs about the applicability of the 'Ads' anti-feature tag.
This issue is opened to start the discussion here at F-Droid and to clarify when the 'Ads' tag is applicable.
Currently, the documentation reads:
This Anti-Feature is applied to an app that contains advertising.
Note that most applications that contain advertising are not Free Software, because they use proprietary software (e.g. AdMob) to provide that advertising. Those apps will not be found in the repo at all, so the only time you would see this Anti-Feature applied would be an app that contains advertising without using Non-Free Software to do it.
The first paragraph is quite generic, but the second paragraph implies the use of software to provide advertising.
Paraphrasing the last part:
This Anti-Feature is applied for apps that contain advertising using only Free Software to do it.
On web pages, advertising is often loaded dynamically based on user interests from third party providers without user intervention and can be used for tracking.
Analoguously, this tag makes sense, because the user is made aware that during the usage of the application, additional content is dynamically loaded and could be used for tracking.
In the case of Organic Maps, in my understanding, there was an affiliate link that was generated fully offline and could not have been used for tracking.
The comparison between donation links and affiliation links is interesting, because its discrimination implies different types of links:
- Donation links: static links to directly pay the developers
- Affiliation links: links with an added identifier that could lead to indirect payments to the developers
- Convenience links: static links to arbitrary websites
- Links to official webpages
- Links to wikipedia, openstreetmaps, web archive, etc
- Links to google, bing, booking, etc searches with relevant keywords (not an objective difference to subtype 2 though)
As a privacy aware user, it relevant that the app usage is not tracked without active actions, meaning: if I see a link to google, I assume that google only gets involved, if I actively click that link. I don't mind, if it is link type 2 or 3, because it is not me being tracked directly. I don't see an issue in money being involved - after all, we all need money for a living. In my opinion, it is good, if developers get some money for making their apps even better.
Therefore, the clarification of the ads tag should include that
Ads (which essentially are just other type of links - graphic or not) are dynamically loaded from an online endpoint
In case of other links,
- the target should be clearly indicated (eg. 'search on example.com')
- affiliations should be mentioned in the app's description
If the above is not true, some form of user deception could be assumed and an anti-feature may be adequate. However, none of the existing tags would seem appropriate in that case.
Disclaimer:
This OP represents my personal opinion as an avid FOSS user and should open an objective and nuanced discussion.