Framasoft being an association of general interest, a donation of 100€ in France will cost you 34€ after tax exemption. We have set up a unique site to support us, consult our reports (validated by an auditor), and learn more about the donations received.
In recent years, we have witnessed <strong> the widespread corporate concentration of Internet actors</strong>(Youtube belonging to Google, WhatsApp to Facebook, Skype to Microsoft, etc.). This centralisation is detrimental, not only because it curbs innovation, but also because it results in a loss of freedom for users, <strong>who no longer control their digital existence</strong>: their behaviour is continually dissected and analysed so that they can be better targeted by publicity, and their data – which should be private (sites visited, emails exchanged, videos watched, etc.) – can be analysed by government services.
The way that Framasoft would like to deal with this issue is simple: to highlight and provide a Free, Ethical, Decentralised and Solidarity-based alternative to each of these services which deprive users of their freedom.
The increasingly centralized online services provided by sprawling giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, or Microsoft (GAFAM) pose a threat to our digital lives.
These services track us everywhere, while claiming to give us a better “user experience”. But our behaviour is under constant surveillance. This information can be used to display targeted adverts, but the revelations of the Snowden case have also shown that Internet giants have been forced to communicate this data (sometimes extremely private: emails from Gmail, photos shared on Facebook, Skype conversations, smartphone locations, etc.) to government services. <strong>Under the pretense of fighting terrorism</strong>, states are able to gather much more intelligence than a "Big Brother" would ever have dreamed of.
Our data is an extension of ourselves. It tells third-parties where we are, who we are with, our political and sexual orientations, sites we have visited, our favorite recipes, our favorite topics of interest, and so on.<br /> While a single data point is not always sensitive, the loss of large amounts of aggregated data can be dangerous (for example if you browse topics about cancer before subscribing to a life insurance).<br /> In a world where everything has been digitized (ebooks, TV, phones, music, social networks, etc.), <strong>your private life is an essential part of your individuality</strong>. It would only take a malicious hacker with access to your smartphone a few minutes to cause you serious harm taking control of your identity on Facebook, consulting your professional or medical information, making purchases without your authorisation, etc.).
Major actors of the Internet have become real giants: Facebook has acquired WhatsApp and Instagram, Google owns Youtube and Waze, Microsoft distributes Skype, etc.<br /> This concentration of actors creates multiple issues: what if Facebook were suddenly shut down? And how could we browse the Web if Google went down? <strong>We rely more and more on services provided by a small group of suppliers.</strong> For example, Apple (iPhone), Google (Android) and Microsoft (Windows Phone) dominate almost the entire mobile OS industry.<br /> Furthermore, the size of these actors impedes innovation: it’s hard to launch a startup that can match up to Apple or Google (the first and second worldwide market capitalisations, respectively).<br /> Finally, The lack of diversity of the giants means they can track many people who are unaware that there may be alternatives, and it can influence the kind of data you receive (a Google search will produce different results for the term “nuclear power” depending on whether Google considers you to be an environmentalist or pro-nuclear power).
