Mobilizon (“Let’s mobilize!”) is the new product promoted by Framasoft, which previously launched the “Internet Negotiations” campaign and then launched the “Contributopia” project (https://contributopia.org/) and the development of PeerTube. As PeerTube had proposed the decentralization of Y̵͍̘͌o̶̝͕͆ǘ̵̬̬̕ŕ̴͍u̵̱͐d̵͇͓̎̂̋ẻ̴̩̠̖́̅, and building on this success, Framasoft is launching a product whose objective is to replace and decentralize ̷̑͜F̸͛̿͜á̴̜͍k̶̡̺̃̈́e̵̲̬̎b̶̹̄̏o̵̖̾͘o̶͘ͅz̴͉̺̈́̀ Events.
If Mobilizon is much awaited among activists, it remains that its approach poses a certain number of problems: the first being the complete ignorance of existing solutions, the second a de facto centralization of development activities by Framasoft which, it seems to us, does not fall within its prerogatives or its long-term interests.
We would therefore like to reflect further on what is problematic with Framasoft’s approach and how we could take advantage of cooperative rather than competitive alternatives, especially in an area (event information sharing) that really does not require redundancy of functionality.
Looking at what already exists
The question arises as to why to prefer a new development rather than an improvement of existing solutions.
Technophile activists have long used Dudle by Benjamin Kellermann of Dresden Technical University, a free version (AGPL-3.0) of Doodle, a tool that allows a (anonymous) group to coordinate to find the best date for a meeting. Dudle’s functionality is simple and efficient, requires no prior account and no interoperability between instances: everything happens on the Web at a specific URL and with cookies. It is Dudle’s simplicity that has made him successful with some activists.
There are different software programs that can be used to organize groups and publish events; I am thinking of Loomio or Discourse for example: these programs have a slightly broader organizational view than the event alone and support collective organization and information structuring.
One may question the necessity to separate the announcement of events from the community’s own organization, such as information sharing and decision-making. Indeed, software that would simply announce events (such as EventBrite) does not contribute to strengthening the community but simply directs energies to an ephemeral instance, which is why ̷̑͜F̸͛̿͜á̴̜͍k̶̡̺̃̈́e̵̲̬̎b̶̹̄̏o̵̖̾͘o̶͘ͅz̴͉̺̈́̀ Events is sometimes preferred. Mobilizon seems to favor a format that would be a little more advanced than simply announcing events, but it is difficult to see how it will reach the level of sophistication of a Discourse in terms of group management, topics, editing ability, etc… because Discourse is widely shared and has several years of experience.
However, as Framasoft is well established through its intense and generous work that has benefited the entire community, many people are expecting Mobilizon, and we can imagine that the software will be widely adopted and will be a success. Therefore, the question arises as to whether a broad adoption of event software would not be a somewhat limited proposal that would undermine other ongoing initiatives already proposing participatory and advanced organizational models.
Mobilizon is a tool designed to create platforms for managing communities and events.
already existing:
- Demosphere
- Dudle
- Radar
- etc.
Yet nothing in Framasoft’s approach indicates that they have any interest in using the tools already in use among off-̷̑͜F̸͛̿͜á̴̜͍k̶̡̺̃̈́e̵̲̬̎b̶̹̄̏o̵̖̾͘o̶͘ͅz̴͉̺̈́̀ activists. For me, this is the main mistake made by Framasoft: the two features highlighted, namely the “multiple identities” and “group management” of the last stage of financing of the campaign are totally off-topic, not only because they are orthogonal with the event functionality, but also because they compete with the tools already used elsewhere by the communities concerned, it seems important that communication be opened as of now with these different communities.
Decentralize decentralization
Several initiatives are focused on thinking about how to organize themselves collectively,petites singularités is one of them: we lead different initiatives with several groups in order to think with them about how to organize ourselves in a network, how to share information, how to federate groups, and especially how to structure the information produced in our resistance collectives in order to transform it into knowledge.
It is a long-term task in which we move forward step by step with few resources; it is not a matter of “getting people off ̷̑͜F̸͛̿͜á̴̜͍k̶̡̺̃̈́e̵̲̬̎b̶̹̄̏o̵̖̾͘o̶͘ͅz̴͉̺̈́̀ or G̸͍͇̚á̶̙̘g̷̋͝ͅģ̶̓l̸͍̀e̸̻͐” but of proposing a different organizational model. We do not position ourselves in relation to these companies: we are elsewhere, in the creation of collectives and resistance.
For us, the reductive discourse of "getting people out of… "is problematic, because like any simple and direct statement, it is easy to understand and unifying, yet it avoids thinking about technology, and sometimes reproduces existing models that have been defined by others for purposes that are not ours (or even aim to divide us), giving rise to comparisons that are not relevant, on Foo I can do this, I cannot do it with the new software.
In our opinion, it is about proposing radically different, decentralized and shared technical models, but very often we come up against the popularity of the “out of” discourse and this leaves little room for other proposals. Mobilizon in this respect is particularly problematic because it comes from a very popular initiative in the field and has not been decided in consultation with existent projects.
If Framasoft has our full support for its projects, we also think that Framasoft should contact its allies to imagine common futures, rather than unilaterally decide on the card to play and play it without consultation. In contrast to this approach, that of IN COMMON seeks to integrate into its reflection all the actors involved in the development of tools to serve the common. It seems essential to us to make Mobilizon an event management tool that can be used in other software, without imposing notions such as “multiple identities” which is a misleading idea insofar as they are linked to the same e-mail, these identities are very easily re-associated, which is not at all part of the problem under consideration: everyone is free to maintain several schedules or aspects of their lives that require voluntary segregation, but doing so within this software creates more difficulties than it solves. Mobilizon must ensure that it integrates the required functionality as plugins into Communecter, Demosphere or Discourse for example.
