title: Media Area
press:
title: Press Release
md: |-
#### Mobilizon, a free and federated tool to get our events off Facebook!
On Tuesday, May 14, 2019, the non-profit organization Framasoft launched a fundraiser for the Mobilizon software. You will find here elements to understand
its context and discover functionalities.
#### Why Mobilizon?
During the Contributopia
campaign, Framasoft announced that we’d provide a new web service that will
allow communities to create their own event publication spaces, in order to
make it easier to emancipate themselves from the tech giants platforms. Indeed,
when we organize gatherings through Facebook tools or on Meetup-like services,
we provide group members private data to these Big Tech’s platforms. Clicking
"Going" on a Facebook event is problematic: it says much more about yourself than you might think, gives significant
power to advertisers who pay Facebook and encloses the community events
into a tool that will prevent it from self-managing. We should
not forget that terms and conditions of use on these platforms allow their owners
to close a group or a community without any reason whatsoever. Moreover, their
centralized structure represents an entry point for intelligence agencies and
malicious hackers.
#### Mobilizon, a free and federated alternative
Mobilizon will be ***a free software respecting fundamental freedoms***
for people who want to gather together. Mobilizon will be a digital
common which respects privacy and activism by design. Mobilizon
will be ***a user-friendly, emancipatory and ethical tool***.
Because we want to offer the software the most suited to the needs of the users,
we took time to think about what a tool that would really empower individuals
and groups might look like. That’s why we’ve spent the last few months analysing
existing tools to understand their various features and to consider how we could
respect users by deploying them. It also seemed essential to us to study the
digital practices of activists to understand their needs for gathering, organizing
and mobilizing. That’s why we worked with two designers: Marie-Cécile Paccard and Geoffrey Dorne.
Moreover, we want Mobilizon to be ***federated*** in order
to allow communities to install their own instance (event publication website).
Mobilizon instances will be able to connect to each other. This will help to
foster interactions between communities and their users. As the ActivityPub federation protocol allows interaction between
software applications using the same protocol, We can imagine Mobilizon being
linked to [Mastodon](https://joinmastodon.org/) (alternative
to Twitter), [PeerTube](https://joinpeertube.org/en/)
(alternative to YouTube) and many other similar tools.
#### Mobilizon, the fundraising
Framasoft have invested time, work and money to imagine Mobilizon’s design.
Since our organization is financed only by donations, we set up this fundraising
to keep investing in the development of this software . We have chosen to organize
it on our own website in order to reduce bank and administrative costs to the
minimum. Thus our aim is to propose a new model for financing digital commons.
Launched on Tuesday, May 14, 2019, the Mobilizon fundraising is organized around
3 levels to reach before July 10:
##### Level 1: €20,000 - Free & basic version
This amount will cover our prototype expenses. Thus, we will recover the initial
investment for design and promotion of Mobilizon. Namely: the functionalities
benchmark, the designers work on uses and interfaces, and the development time
on basic functionalities on events.
→ This 1st level was reached in less than 5 days.
##### Level 2: €35,000 – Federated version
With this extra €15,000, we will be able to finance ActivityPub protocol implementation
and the development of administration tools for instances. The fact that Mobilizon
is federated is important to allow users to connect to several communities.
Each Mobilizon account could be linked to other federated softwares.
##### Level 3: €50,000 – Ideal Version
If we reach €50,000 in donations, we will get involved in design and development
of new features. Thus, we would like Mobilizon to provide a groups feature,
which would integrate messaging and exchange tools between members. Another
feature that seems necessary to us is the possibility of integrating external
tools which community members already use (survey tools, decision-making tools,
collaborative tools, etc.). Finally, we intend to integrate the possibility
for Mobilizon users to manage several identities depending on the communities
they are part of.
With €50,000, we would have the resources to produce the best software we can
create until fall of 2019. Then, we will publish a beta release built on a solid
base which will allow us to offer you more features. With extra cash, we could
consider going beyond this beta release. The users feedback and comments on
this beta release will allow us to improve Mobilizon in order to propose a first
complete release in the first half of 2020. Producing Mobilizon is not a sprint
race, where you promise everything, right away, to everyone. It’s more like
a cross-country race whose first step is to develop a tool which will allow
you to create events and do it well.
The success of this fundraising depends on each of us. Framasoft is committed
to broadcast Mobilizon’s progress at each new step, on the News page and in the dedicated newsletter.
#### Framasoft
[Framasoft](https://framasoft.org/) is a non-profit
organisation created in 2004, which focuses on popular education on the stakes
of our digital world. Our small organisation (less than 40 members, including
9 employees) is known to have carried out the project De-google-ify Internet, which proposes 34 ethical and alternative
online tools. Since 2017, we have been developing PeerTube, a free and federated alternative to YouTube. Recognised
for its service of public interest, our organisation is more than 90% funded
through donations, mainly from our French supporters.
#### Contact us
Would you like more information about the Mobilizon fundraising or to conduct
an interview? Feel free to contact us via medias@framasoft.org.
#### Relay our fundraising on your social medias
- **Share the URL of our fundraising website:** [@:link.joinmobilizon](@:link.joinmobilizon)
- **2 texts proposals for accompanying text:**
> A free and federated alternative to organize our events off Facebook, Meetup
and others?
#Mobilizon, the new #Framasoft project needs you!!!
> A free software who allows communities to create their own events publishing
spaces to better emancipate themselves from the tech giants’ platforms?
#Mobilizon, the new #Framasoft project needs you!!!
- **Hashtag ideas to go with your posts:**
#Mobilizon #JoinMobilizon
#Framasoft #DigitalCommon #EmancipatoryTool #FundRaising #fediverse #ActivityPub
visual:
title: Visuals
mockup:
title: Mockup
speakabout:
title: Press review
intro: Here are some extracts from our Press
release.
empty_lang: You can find articles in other languages below.
th1: Date
th2: Media
th3: Links
lArticle: Link to the article
lPaywall: Link to the article (subscribers)
lSummary: Link to the summary of the issue
lPodcast: Link to the podcast
lListen: Link to the listening page
about:
title: Useful information
list: |-
- [Contact us](@:link.contact/#questions) (This form relates directly
to our press service).
- Newsletter
subscription page.
- [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framasoft) dedicated
to Framasoft.
- Framasoft [Complete presentation](@:link.soutenir/association).
- Framasoft [Press release](https://wiki.framasoft.org/speakabout).
desc: |-
Framasoft is a freely available public education network which aims to promote
and spread free software and free culture.
As a link between the world of free software and the general public, our association
offers many projects (directory software, a publisher, a websearch engine, etc.),
with three main goals: Free Software, Free Culture, and Free Services.'