11 ms·

Mobilizon – A free, federated tool for events and groups

498 points by staz 6y ago

WC3w6pXxgGd 6y ago
This is created by "activists" who want to organize public protests and other disruptive events. ALWAYS be skeptical of products/services created by people like this. Remember: if they, in any way, suspect you of wrongthink, all the data you thought was yours suddenly becomes public and you will be hunted.
Deukhoofd 6y ago
I really enjoy what Framasoft is trying to do, making the internet decentralized again. I truly hope they're successful in their endeavours!
- glenstein 6y ago
  Strongly agree! I love everything framasoft is doing. It's mana for the internet. It's also a great way to create a sense of perspective for how pro-social (or not) the frightful five are. You would never see Microsoft, or Apple, or Google etc bother to support open protocols or work to flush them out so that events, photos, tweeting, and all the major social activities are put on a foundation of open and interoperable protocols that anyone can use. They certainly could have moved in that direction if they wanted to, but they just haven't wanted to. And while I appreciate for framasoft for what they're doing at face value, on an entirely different level I appreciate the contrast between their projects and the projects of the F5.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bovermyer 6y ago
This is a great endeavor and I hope it succeeds. I only have one question - does it allow for private events?
- severine 6y ago
  does it allow for private events? Seems so: https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/use/events/create-events/#who-can-view-this-event-and-participate https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/use/events/create-events/#who...
- HourglassFR 6y ago
  Yes, if I understand their FAQ correctly https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq/
solarkraft 6y ago
That looks amazing! From its look it seems a lot like it'd be a replacement for Meetup/Eventbrite, which is something I've been waiting for for a while. Framasoft is great!
- suyash 6y ago
  yes more of a meetup.com alternative than anything. However the hard part is how do I migrate my large meetup community to a new platform.
  - monksy 6y ago
    Lots of advanced warning, lots of emails, lots of inperson reminders, etc. For me, I ended up sending multiple emails and killing the group. (I'm not paying meetup "half price" for an essentially useless service. (Ok, the only thing it holds is membership data.. but they expect you to pay for zoom to hold your meetups [which those don't work])
Nextgrid 6y ago
I feel like this misses the point. People dislike Facebook and other centralized platforms not because they're centralized per-se, but because the user experience is terrible (due to mismatched incentives - these platforms make money off ads, so their only objective is to make you engage with the ads as much as possible). The solution is a platform that doesn't have these mismatched incentives (either paid for, ran by donations, etc) but that otherwise has the user experience of the mainsteam platforms. This reads like a tech demo where the tech and decentralization is the selling point, but the truth is, the masses don't know/care about that and rightfully so. The same applies to Mastodon and similar projects.
- HourglassFR 6y ago
  I don't think the point is to replace Facebook&Co though. It is specifically a tool developped for political activists. Everybody can use it of course, it is free software. Given that context the decentralization feature is most definitively a crucial feature. https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq/#facebook https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq/#facebook And even more broadly, the whole point of Framasoft is to offer tools to use the internet in a decentralized way. This is not limited to this particular tool, they have many other project. All offering an inferior user experience than the existing solutions by the usual FAANG giants of course but again the point is decentralization and freedom.
  - candu 6y ago
    Exactly this. From one viewpoint, https://pad.riseup.net/ https://pad.riseup.net/ is just a worse version of Google Docs, and most people will never use it. From another, it's a vital service for preserving the anonymity and security of activists, and comparisons to Google Docs are moot. In other words, these tools quite effectively solve the pain of a small but clearly-defined group of people - turns out this approach is useful beyond the startup world!
- grey_earthling 6y ago
  From the FAQ: > We do not want to reproduce the toxicity of Facebook. Surveillance capitalism uses the mechanisms of the attention economy to lock up our time, capture our behaviour and impose advertising on us. > Mobilizon does not depend on such a business model: this is an opportunity to try to do better, by doing things differently. => https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq#facebook https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq#facebook
linspace 6y ago
This got me surprised: "Mobilizon is designed so that you can follow the news of a group, but not of an individual : it is impossible to follow a single profile. In Mobilizon, profiles have no « wall », « thread » or « story » : only groups can publish posts. The goal is to get rid of the self-promotional reflexes where we stage our lives to be the person at the center of our followers. With Mobilizon, it is not the ego but the collective that counts.""" I understand the motivation but it leaves me with the strange sensation of exchanging one kind of centralization with another. It doesn't click with me.
- fwsgonzo 6y ago
  Considering how vapid the current lineup of social networking is, I'm willing to see how it turns out. There are some other great features too, but I didn't see anything about video-conferencing, which would be a killer feature.
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    There's (was?) https://framatalk.org/ https://framatalk.org/ which is jitsi meet https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  As I understand, it's a forum. Some forums allow you to see posts made by certain user, just mobilizon doesn't. Like ycombinator is not your personal blog, but a group, to which you can contribute.
- malandrew 6y ago
  Seeing that a significant portion of activists are "activists" for purely reasons feeding their own ego and self worth, I see this as a net win for weeding such people out. That said, if this does catch on, you can probably expect such people to start signing their content even if the system specifically doesn't support it.
  - rpgmaker 6y ago
Spearchucker 6y ago
Wow that's pretty ambitious, and pretty relevant for me right now. I build models, and so used to frequent forums to post to build threads detailing what I'd done with photos, sometimes a Word doc, video, and always some plain text. Problem with the forums is that they're dated. It's easy enough to find old content because search is usually pretty ok. Who owns content is still not a solved thing though. A forum in Germany insists you upload your IP to their servers so that your photos don't disappear over time. Other forums let me host my hosts on my own web site with a link. Facebook of course is godawful. Everybody is there, so everybody posts there. Unforunately you cannot find old stuff you know is there. Photos aren't annotated, comments aren't searcheable, stuff just disappears into a rabbit hole. Here today, gone tomorrow. Facebook's content is ephemeral, so it's groups are the worst possible forum replacement. And from what I can tell (I can't start my own group to assess features) Mobilizon doesn't add anything to improve on what Facebook already does. What's needed is an organic heirarchical taxonomy where you're persented with a top-level list of options. Say for instance manufacturers. You pick one, and are given a list of models. Pick one of those and you see all models in the repository for that make/model. Lastly (in my contrived example) you might choose your favourite model maker to further narrow that list, or a date, country or whatever. This is not hard to build (modellers are pretty hardcore about what they build, and so would not hesitate to add the meta data needed to drive this), and I've been toying with a usable UI for it for some time. Maybe I should post up a proof of concept somewhere...
- jtbayly 6y ago
  This use case seems orthogonal at best to the idea of Mobilizon.
  - Spearchucker 6y ago
    Arguably. Forums have been supplanted by Facebook groups. Mobilizon seeks to do the same to Facebook. I can't create a group so I cannot definitively say anything about it. You may very well be right.
    - jtbayly 6y ago
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Some of these illustrations are really great! I'd probably use them as desktop wallpapers if I could get higher resolution versions.
- m12k 6y ago
  The floating islands one made me want to go re-play Bastion
- amelius 6y ago
  You can use Waifu2x to upscale artwork: Online demo: http://waifu2x.udp.jp/ http://waifu2x.udp.jp/ Repo: https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/VRchat/comments/bkw543/tutorial_how_to_upscale_animecartoon_avatar/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VRchat/comments/bkw543/tutorial_how...
- jorams 6y ago
  The full versions of these illustrations have high resolutions: https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-mobilizon-illustration-A_homepage.jpg https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-... https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-08-mobilizon-illustration-E_404.jpg https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-08-... https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-mobilizon-illustration-C_groupe.jpg https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-... https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-mobilizon-illustration-B_creation-evenement.jpg https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-... https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-mobilizon-illustration-D_realisation.jpg https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-... (Not sure if these are linked anywhere, but I just chopped the image size out of the URL.)
- Pouhiou 6y ago
  The sources (krita files) and hi res jpeg files will soon be published online here https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/static6/sources&page=other https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/static6/sources&page=other All those illustrations are CC-By David Revoy : https://www.davidrevoy.com/article800/mobilizon https://www.davidrevoy.com/article800/mobilizon
amelius 6y ago
Nice. But I'm curious how they deal with the network effect. I.e., how do they motivate event organizers to post their events on this platform too? And how do I convince my friends to RSVP on this platform so I can see where they are going?
- olah_1 6y ago
  If users have to sign up (create an account) in the traditional flow, I think this is dead in the water :/
  - amelius 6y ago
    Perhaps some scraper could help with cross-posting of events. The tool can be named Facebook-dl :)
    - berkes 6y ago
      Mastodon, using the same underlying ActivityPub has several "cross posting" solutions mostly to- and fro twitter. As does pixelfed (the instagram for the fediverse) to and from instagram. I can only imagine that there will be some way to cross-post to facebook, meetup or EventBrite, somewhere down the line. Even if done by external parties. Especially facebook because a lot of your audience may be there already. And to many organizers "getting enough people to attend" is probably more important than being fully decentralised and privacy friendly.
  - hypersoar 6y ago
    You don't need an account to RSVP to events; you can participate anonymously. That makes sense, since this is designed with activists in mind.
- riffic 6y ago
  > how do they motivate event organizers to post their events on this platform too In theory, the event organizers would have their own instance and they would post the events directly onto that. This would make sense for organizations with an existing technology infrastructure.
Quanttek 6y ago
This looks fantastic and I like the focus! I am not sure if it's so great to have the getting-started info spread out over multiple site - joinmobilizon.org and mobilizon.org - though
Hitton 6y ago
mozilizon.org page says: >try Mobilizon >Create a fake account and fake events on demo.mobilizon.org But for some reason this fake account requires quite real email address. No thanks.
- minerjoe 6y ago
  Their little tour recommends using a throwaway email.
kaushikt 6y ago
Meetup has done a standup job with events. I would love to see them do more with groups too. It's annoying to join the meetup "group" and then join their adjacent Slack or Telegram group.
- mxuribe 6y ago
  Even though i've never been a fan of centralized services, i never hated meetup.com that much...Or, rather, i never hated the concept of what meetup.com represents (or could represent). But over the years, i really have always disliked the overall experience. And as years pass by, i seem to dislike the meetup.com experience more and more.
DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
Reading through the page I just couldn't shake off the feeling that the illustrations remind me a lot of the Pepper and Carrot comic. I scrolled down to the footer almost expecting to find the name David Revoy there and indeed it was :D
agumonkey 6y ago
What else is there in this field ?
- berkes 6y ago
  With field you mean "organising events"? If so, Meetup.com, Eventbrite and Facebook are probably the most famous.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    actually I wasn't sure of the whole surface of mobilizon .. I thought it did more, thanks
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  Meetup.com - which is closed, centralized, and shockingly expensive.
  - monksy 6y ago
    $180 per year.
- jarofgreen 6y ago
  If you mean the field of people organising events on open source decentralised software, I think there is: * https://framagit.org/les/gancio https://framagit.org/les/gancio * https://github.com/lowercasename/gathio https://github.com/lowercasename/gathio * https://github.com/GetTogetherComm/GetTogether https://github.com/GetTogetherComm/GetTogether * https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown Mastodon fork with basic event stuff (This is not to take away from Mobilizon - congrats to them!)
  - mfkp 6y ago
    It doesn't look like Hometown supports events: > If you've dreamed of a fediverse where you can send out calendar events and RSVP to things, well, this doesn't do that but it's a step in the right direction because it encourages rich content types. https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/wiki/More-content-types https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/wiki/More-content-...
meetups323 6y ago
I'm about 2 hours into setting up an Mobilizon instance for outdoor socially distant activities, but running into problems [1] and at the end of the day federation isn't important to me and I'd prefer the learning opportunity and flexibility of building my own [2]. Curious if any HNers in the PNW region might use such a service to pod up for outdoor socially distant activities (hiking, wilderness cleanup, kayaking, perhaps camping/backpacking/biking, etc). I moved here just pre-COVID, and quarantine, my introverted nature, lack of FB, and tendency to enjoy things that don't involve lots of people being around has left me without as much of a do-things-with group as I might like. [1] I'm 2+ hours into provisioning/setup, and unfortunately the yarn install keeps hanging/crashing on the $5 digital ocean droplet I provisioned for this, and at the end of the day I'd prefer to have full knowledge and control over the stack. Additionally, for me federation isn't important, all I want is an open architecture that respects privacy. [2] To keep things simple for myself and users, it wouldn't be federated, instead there would be a single domain I manage that hosts the events. The architecture would of course be open source, and my goal would be to make the entire project be available as some sort of { docker image / kubernetes cluster / DO App / heroku thing / something } such that anyone can easily launch their own instance without needing to dedicate 2+ hours to the process, and more importantly any user can find activities to join in on without needing to set up an account/provide email/etc.
- prophesi 6y ago
  Once the docker installation is documented, it should take considerably less time to self-host. This is for `yarn build`, but perhaps it applies to `yarn install` as well: there's a note in the documentation that says compiling the front-end requires 2gb of RAM. You'll need to set it to use only 1gb RAM to accommodate the $5 droplet's specs via `NODE_BUILD_MEMORY=1024 yarn build` As for the technology & stack, most of the code is from Pleroma, essentially a lightweight Elixir/Phoenix version of Mastodon, with Vue for the frontend. If there's any part of the architecture that's closed, the project would highly appreciate raising an issue, as it wishes to be a fully libre project.
- ivarv 6y ago
  Where in the PNW are you located? Given the border closure it's no longer feasible to organize international meetups.
throwawaysea 6y ago
What is Mobilizon's policy on deplatforming, censorship, etc. How will they protect against owner/employee bias? I ask this because Mastodon's founders also pitched a federated tool to the world but then turned out to be very much the same authoritarian pro-censorship actor as the centralized platform we'd all like to get away from.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  That's the difference: they aren't centralized.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  How is Mastodon censored? Specific instances or is the general community actively censoring content across instances?
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    My understanding is that the project founder and/or leads are pursuing a campaign to pressure all instances to not peer with instances on their political blacklist, and adding those who refuse to their peering demands to the blacklist. In effect the “fediverse” that is claimed as a benefit is in name only. I’m not sure what benefit the project offers anymore over centralized platforms since it is becoming the same thing as a result.
    - mattbk1 6y ago
      Each instance is free to federate or not with every other instance. You have every right to post what you want, but there's no requirement for other people to listen.
    - Seirdy 6y ago
      There exist a number of self-described free speech extremist instances, and moderated instances that only blacklist spammers like bot servers. There also exist instances that will blacklist servers with high levels of hate speech. You can pick or create an instance that meets your wants and needs, but other instances can exercise their freedom of association and choose not to federate with you. Things on the fediverse are also less black-and-white than you're portraying them. Some instances will prevent one instance's posts from showing up in the default public timeline of the whole known network, but will still federate with them; users will still be able to follow or be followed by members of the filtered instance normally. Users on Mastodon can also migrate their account to other Mastodon instances and keep their followers, but migrating from Mastodon to Pleroma is a bit lacking; fortunately, you can still put a redirect on your profile for future followers. TLDR: no, I don't think the fediverse is just like centralized social media.
jonstaab 6y ago
Is it just me, or has "federated" come to mean just mean multi-tenant SaaS (maybe with some features that cross boundaries) that's also open source?
- corobo 6y ago
  Does ActivityPub not count as federated for you? https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/contribute/activity_pub/ https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/contribute/activity_pub/
- detaro 6y ago
  Just you. Federation still means communication/collaboration between independently run servers.
- mxuribe 6y ago
  With all due respect, i think that might just be you. Email has operated as federated for so many years, and while there are certainly large providers like gmail, etc....There are also plenty of non-multi-tenant, non-SaaS instances of email servers (and associated mailboxes).
zimpenfish 6y ago
Got an install up and running on Arch but it required a fair amount of divergence from the installation instructions. (I'll try and whip up a list of what was different later.)
cnr 6y ago
JIT news for polish women (and men) protesting against stripping away abortion rights. The more independent communication apps the better :)
laurent123456 6y ago
Looks like they self-host their source code too: https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/ https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/ It appears to be developed in some language called "Euphoria"?? That's such a strange choice and is going to seriously limit contributions from other developers.
- wishinghand 6y ago
  Looks like Elixir to me. Not hugely mainstream but I think it's shed its niche status. Which folders have Euphoria in them?
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    They based their code in part on Pleroma per something else I read, which is written in Elixir.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    Yeah, their development guide lists Elixir (and Erlang), PostgreSQL and NodeJS as dependencies. https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/contribute/development/#without-docker https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/contribute/development/#witho...
- Vosporos 6y ago
  What is this “Euphoria” you are talking about?
- Seirdy 6y ago
  Mobilizon is written in Elixir because it is based on Pleroma, a Mastodon-compatible/Mastodon-alternative server for the Fediverse. Elixir isn't one of the most popular langs out there, but it is far from being a "niche" language. Okay that was a lot of words. Maybe I should explain for those less familiar: Users on the Fediverse can interact without being aware of the fact that their servers are running completely different software. While Fediverse members such as Mastodon take inspiration from Twitter, others have different focuses: Peertube is YouTube inspired, Pixelfed is Instagram-inspired, and some like Pleroma are kinda doing their own thing imo. I personally prefer Pleroma to Mastodon, as evidenced from my bio; it's lightweight, easier to set up, and has a great variety of first- and third-party front-ends (including a lightly-modified version of the Mastodon front-end and a Gopher-accessible one). It appears that Mobilizon devs wanted to create a new Fediverse server with a different focus: something that warranted writing a back-end based on Pleroma instead of just creating a new Pleroma front-end. Basing off Pleroma was a good choice because unlike Mastodon, Pleroma is lightweight enough to run off a singe-board computer like a Raspberry Pi. Being written in Elixir definitely has a lot to do with this.
skratlo 6y ago
It's great to see alternatives popping up everywhere, keep it coming
zanecraw 6y ago
looks pretty dope!
jarofgreen 6y ago
I'm very pleased to see this launch, but have one feature request - and I'm posting it here because it's a request I would make to anyone doing event software. Please have open feeds in iCal format for your site, including one that lets people get all public data. This will make the data on your website so much more reusable and useful. And definetly iCal - it's so popular, and most personal calendars can even import it directly. Yes, it's odd text format is a pain, but there are libraries in almost every language you can use. Mobilizon has iCal export for a single event, but not for all public events on the site. (I did have a Mastodon chat with them about this but can't find their replies now) But definitely congrats to Framasoft for this :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar
- glenstein 6y ago
  I hadn't thought of this, but this is a great suggestion and I hope your suggestion gets implemented!
- rigelk 6y ago
  please fill an issue on the forge at https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/-/issues https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/-/issues
  - jarofgreen 6y ago
    Done! https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/-/issues/420 https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/-/issues/420
forgotmypw17 6y ago
What an amazing looking project! I think this type of "someone in the group runs an instance" type deal will become more and more frequent. Each family/community will have a "tech guy" or two who manages this type of thing, maybe on an offline device, and everyone chips in a couple satoshi per year for the hardware and network. If you store your data in something easy like text files, you can even have several redundant devices, all for the price of a couple raspberry pis. Imagine a raspberry pi with a terabyte of storage attached. Certainly that's enough for a "Familybook" of your closest people. This is the type of device I am developing for today. I'm writing the simplest HTML possible, always no-JS friendly, using the most common interfaces supported by the most common web servers, and completely portable with just a zip file of text files. :)
mikeruhl 6y ago
Thank you so much for this. I have wanted something like this since getting off Facebook.

498 points by staz 6y ago

This is created by "activists" who want to organize public protests and other disruptive events. ALWAYS be skeptical of products/services created by people like this. Remember: if they, in any way, suspect you of wrongthink, all the data you thought was yours suddenly becomes public and you will be hunted.

Deukhoofd 6y ago

I really enjoy what Framasoft is trying to do, making the internet decentralized again. I truly hope they're successful in their endeavours!

glenstein 6y ago
Strongly agree! I love everything framasoft is doing. It's mana for the internet. It's also a great way to create a sense of perspective for how pro-social (or not) the frightful five are. You would never see Microsoft, or Apple, or Google etc bother to support open protocols or work to flush them out so that events, photos, tweeting, and all the major social activities are put on a foundation of open and interoperable protocols that anyone can use. They certainly could have moved in that direction if they wanted to, but they just haven't wanted to. And while I appreciate for framasoft for what they're doing at face value, on an entirely different level I appreciate the contrast between their projects and the projects of the F5.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bovermyer 6y ago

This is a great endeavor and I hope it succeeds. I only have one question - does it allow for private events?

severine 6y ago
does it allow for private events? Seems so: https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/use/events/create-events/#who-can-view-this-event-and-participate https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/use/events/create-events/#who...
HourglassFR 6y ago
Yes, if I understand their FAQ correctly https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq/ https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq/

solarkraft 6y ago

That looks amazing! From its look it seems a lot like it'd be a replacement for Meetup/Eventbrite, which is something I've been waiting for for a while. Framasoft is great!

suyash 6y ago
yes more of a meetup.com alternative than anything. However the hard part is how do I migrate my large meetup community to a new platform.
- monksy 6y ago
  Lots of advanced warning, lots of emails, lots of inperson reminders, etc. For me, I ended up sending multiple emails and killing the group. (I'm not paying meetup "half price" for an essentially useless service. (Ok, the only thing it holds is membership data.. but they expect you to pay for zoom to hold your meetups [which those don't work])

Nextgrid 6y ago

I feel like this misses the point. People dislike Facebook and other centralized platforms not because they're centralized per-se, but because the user experience is terrible (due to mismatched incentives - these platforms make money off ads, so their only objective is to make you engage with the ads as much as possible). The solution is a platform that doesn't have these mismatched incentives (either paid for, ran by donations, etc) but that otherwise has the user experience of the mainsteam platforms. This reads like a tech demo where the tech and decentralization is the selling point, but the truth is, the masses don't know/care about that and rightfully so. The same applies to Mastodon and similar projects.

HourglassFR 6y ago
I don't think the point is to replace Facebook&Co though. It is specifically a tool developped for political activists. Everybody can use it of course, it is free software. Given that context the decentralization feature is most definitively a crucial feature. https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq/#facebook https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq/#facebook And even more broadly, the whole point of Framasoft is to offer tools to use the internet in a decentralized way. This is not limited to this particular tool, they have many other project. All offering an inferior user experience than the existing solutions by the usual FAANG giants of course but again the point is decentralization and freedom.
- candu 6y ago
  Exactly this. From one viewpoint, https://pad.riseup.net/ https://pad.riseup.net/ is just a worse version of Google Docs, and most people will never use it. From another, it's a vital service for preserving the anonymity and security of activists, and comparisons to Google Docs are moot. In other words, these tools quite effectively solve the pain of a small but clearly-defined group of people - turns out this approach is useful beyond the startup world!
grey_earthling 6y ago
From the FAQ: > We do not want to reproduce the toxicity of Facebook. Surveillance capitalism uses the mechanisms of the attention economy to lock up our time, capture our behaviour and impose advertising on us. > Mobilizon does not depend on such a business model: this is an opportunity to try to do better, by doing things differently. => https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq#facebook https://joinmobilizon.org/en/faq#facebook

linspace 6y ago

This got me surprised: "Mobilizon is designed so that you can follow the news of a group, but not of an individual : it is impossible to follow a single profile. In Mobilizon, profiles have no « wall », « thread » or « story » : only groups can publish posts. The goal is to get rid of the self-promotional reflexes where we stage our lives to be the person at the center of our followers. With Mobilizon, it is not the ego but the collective that counts.""" I understand the motivation but it leaves me with the strange sensation of exchanging one kind of centralization with another. It doesn't click with me.

fwsgonzo 6y ago
Considering how vapid the current lineup of social networking is, I'm willing to see how it turns out. There are some other great features too, but I didn't see anything about video-conferencing, which would be a killer feature.
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  There's (was?) https://framatalk.org/ https://framatalk.org/ which is jitsi meet https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
As I understand, it's a forum. Some forums allow you to see posts made by certain user, just mobilizon doesn't. Like ycombinator is not your personal blog, but a group, to which you can contribute.
malandrew 6y ago
Seeing that a significant portion of activists are "activists" for purely reasons feeding their own ego and self worth, I see this as a net win for weeding such people out. That said, if this does catch on, you can probably expect such people to start signing their content even if the system specifically doesn't support it.
- rpgmaker 6y ago

Spearchucker 6y ago

Wow that's pretty ambitious, and pretty relevant for me right now. I build models, and so used to frequent forums to post to build threads detailing what I'd done with photos, sometimes a Word doc, video, and always some plain text. Problem with the forums is that they're dated. It's easy enough to find old content because search is usually pretty ok. Who owns content is still not a solved thing though. A forum in Germany insists you upload your IP to their servers so that your photos don't disappear over time. Other forums let me host my hosts on my own web site with a link. Facebook of course is godawful. Everybody is there, so everybody posts there. Unforunately you cannot find old stuff you know is there. Photos aren't annotated, comments aren't searcheable, stuff just disappears into a rabbit hole. Here today, gone tomorrow. Facebook's content is ephemeral, so it's groups are the worst possible forum replacement. And from what I can tell (I can't start my own group to assess features) Mobilizon doesn't add anything to improve on what Facebook already does. What's needed is an organic heirarchical taxonomy where you're persented with a top-level list of options. Say for instance manufacturers. You pick one, and are given a list of models. Pick one of those and you see all models in the repository for that make/model. Lastly (in my contrived example) you might choose your favourite model maker to further narrow that list, or a date, country or whatever. This is not hard to build (modellers are pretty hardcore about what they build, and so would not hesitate to add the meta data needed to drive this), and I've been toying with a usable UI for it for some time. Maybe I should post up a proof of concept somewhere...

jtbayly 6y ago
This use case seems orthogonal at best to the idea of Mobilizon.
- Spearchucker 6y ago
  Arguably. Forums have been supplanted by Facebook groups. Mobilizon seeks to do the same to Facebook. I can't create a group so I cannot definitively say anything about it. You may very well be right.
  - jtbayly 6y ago

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

Some of these illustrations are really great! I'd probably use them as desktop wallpapers if I could get higher resolution versions.

m12k 6y ago
The floating islands one made me want to go re-play Bastion
amelius 6y ago
You can use Waifu2x to upscale artwork: Online demo: http://waifu2x.udp.jp/ http://waifu2x.udp.jp/ Repo: https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/VRchat/comments/bkw543/tutorial_how_to_upscale_animecartoon_avatar/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VRchat/comments/bkw543/tutorial_how...
jorams 6y ago
The full versions of these illustrations have high resolutions: https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-mobilizon-illustration-A_homepage.jpg https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-... https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-08-mobilizon-illustration-E_404.jpg https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-08-... https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-mobilizon-illustration-C_groupe.jpg https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-... https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-mobilizon-illustration-B_creation-evenement.jpg https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-... https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-mobilizon-illustration-D_realisation.jpg https://framablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-10-06-... (Not sure if these are linked anywhere, but I just chopped the image size out of the URL.)
Pouhiou 6y ago
The sources (krita files) and hi res jpeg files will soon be published online here https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/static6/sources&page=other https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/static6/sources&page=other All those illustrations are CC-By David Revoy : https://www.davidrevoy.com/article800/mobilizon https://www.davidrevoy.com/article800/mobilizon

amelius 6y ago

Nice. But I'm curious how they deal with the network effect. I.e., how do they motivate event organizers to post their events on this platform too? And how do I convince my friends to RSVP on this platform so I can see where they are going?

olah_1 6y ago
If users have to sign up (create an account) in the traditional flow, I think this is dead in the water :/
- amelius 6y ago
  Perhaps some scraper could help with cross-posting of events. The tool can be named Facebook-dl :)
  - berkes 6y ago
    Mastodon, using the same underlying ActivityPub has several "cross posting" solutions mostly to- and fro twitter. As does pixelfed (the instagram for the fediverse) to and from instagram. I can only imagine that there will be some way to cross-post to facebook, meetup or EventBrite, somewhere down the line. Even if done by external parties. Especially facebook because a lot of your audience may be there already. And to many organizers "getting enough people to attend" is probably more important than being fully decentralised and privacy friendly.
- hypersoar 6y ago
  You don't need an account to RSVP to events; you can participate anonymously. That makes sense, since this is designed with activists in mind.
riffic 6y ago
> how do they motivate event organizers to post their events on this platform too In theory, the event organizers would have their own instance and they would post the events directly onto that. This would make sense for organizations with an existing technology infrastructure.

Quanttek 6y ago

This looks fantastic and I like the focus! I am not sure if it's so great to have the getting-started info spread out over multiple site - joinmobilizon.org and mobilizon.org - though

Hitton 6y ago

mozilizon.org page says: >try Mobilizon >Create a fake account and fake events on demo.mobilizon.org But for some reason this fake account requires quite real email address. No thanks.

minerjoe 6y ago
Their little tour recommends using a throwaway email.

kaushikt 6y ago

Meetup has done a standup job with events. I would love to see them do more with groups too. It's annoying to join the meetup "group" and then join their adjacent Slack or Telegram group.

mxuribe 6y ago
Even though i've never been a fan of centralized services, i never hated meetup.com that much...Or, rather, i never hated the concept of what meetup.com represents (or could represent). But over the years, i really have always disliked the overall experience. And as years pass by, i seem to dislike the meetup.com experience more and more.

DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago

Reading through the page I just couldn't shake off the feeling that the illustrations remind me a lot of the Pepper and Carrot comic. I scrolled down to the footer almost expecting to find the name David Revoy there and indeed it was :D

agumonkey 6y ago

What else is there in this field ?

berkes 6y ago
With field you mean "organising events"? If so, Meetup.com, Eventbrite and Facebook are probably the most famous.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  actually I wasn't sure of the whole surface of mobilizon .. I thought it did more, thanks
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
Meetup.com - which is closed, centralized, and shockingly expensive.
- monksy 6y ago
  $180 per year.
jarofgreen 6y ago
If you mean the field of people organising events on open source decentralised software, I think there is: * https://framagit.org/les/gancio https://framagit.org/les/gancio * https://github.com/lowercasename/gathio https://github.com/lowercasename/gathio * https://github.com/GetTogetherComm/GetTogether https://github.com/GetTogetherComm/GetTogether * https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown Mastodon fork with basic event stuff (This is not to take away from Mobilizon - congrats to them!)
- mfkp 6y ago
  It doesn't look like Hometown supports events: > If you've dreamed of a fediverse where you can send out calendar events and RSVP to things, well, this doesn't do that but it's a step in the right direction because it encourages rich content types. https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/wiki/More-content-types https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/wiki/More-content-...

meetups323 6y ago

I'm about 2 hours into setting up an Mobilizon instance for outdoor socially distant activities, but running into problems [1] and at the end of the day federation isn't important to me and I'd prefer the learning opportunity and flexibility of building my own [2]. Curious if any HNers in the PNW region might use such a service to pod up for outdoor socially distant activities (hiking, wilderness cleanup, kayaking, perhaps camping/backpacking/biking, etc). I moved here just pre-COVID, and quarantine, my introverted nature, lack of FB, and tendency to enjoy things that don't involve lots of people being around has left me without as much of a do-things-with group as I might like. [1] I'm 2+ hours into provisioning/setup, and unfortunately the yarn install keeps hanging/crashing on the $5 digital ocean droplet I provisioned for this, and at the end of the day I'd prefer to have full knowledge and control over the stack. Additionally, for me federation isn't important, all I want is an open architecture that respects privacy. [2] To keep things simple for myself and users, it wouldn't be federated, instead there would be a single domain I manage that hosts the events. The architecture would of course be open source, and my goal would be to make the entire project be available as some sort of { docker image / kubernetes cluster / DO App / heroku thing / something } such that anyone can easily launch their own instance without needing to dedicate 2+ hours to the process, and more importantly any user can find activities to join in on without needing to set up an account/provide email/etc.

prophesi 6y ago
Once the docker installation is documented, it should take considerably less time to self-host. This is for `yarn build`, but perhaps it applies to `yarn install` as well: there's a note in the documentation that says compiling the front-end requires 2gb of RAM. You'll need to set it to use only 1gb RAM to accommodate the $5 droplet's specs via `NODE_BUILD_MEMORY=1024 yarn build` As for the technology & stack, most of the code is from Pleroma, essentially a lightweight Elixir/Phoenix version of Mastodon, with Vue for the frontend. If there's any part of the architecture that's closed, the project would highly appreciate raising an issue, as it wishes to be a fully libre project.
ivarv 6y ago
Where in the PNW are you located? Given the border closure it's no longer feasible to organize international meetups.

throwawaysea 6y ago

What is Mobilizon's policy on deplatforming, censorship, etc. How will they protect against owner/employee bias? I ask this because Mastodon's founders also pitched a federated tool to the world but then turned out to be very much the same authoritarian pro-censorship actor as the centralized platform we'd all like to get away from.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago
That's the difference: they aren't centralized.
Jtsummers 6y ago
How is Mastodon censored? Specific instances or is the general community actively censoring content across instances?
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  My understanding is that the project founder and/or leads are pursuing a campaign to pressure all instances to not peer with instances on their political blacklist, and adding those who refuse to their peering demands to the blacklist. In effect the “fediverse” that is claimed as a benefit is in name only. I’m not sure what benefit the project offers anymore over centralized platforms since it is becoming the same thing as a result.
  - mattbk1 6y ago
    Each instance is free to federate or not with every other instance. You have every right to post what you want, but there's no requirement for other people to listen.
  - Seirdy 6y ago
    There exist a number of self-described free speech extremist instances, and moderated instances that only blacklist spammers like bot servers. There also exist instances that will blacklist servers with high levels of hate speech. You can pick or create an instance that meets your wants and needs, but other instances can exercise their freedom of association and choose not to federate with you. Things on the fediverse are also less black-and-white than you're portraying them. Some instances will prevent one instance's posts from showing up in the default public timeline of the whole known network, but will still federate with them; users will still be able to follow or be followed by members of the filtered instance normally. Users on Mastodon can also migrate their account to other Mastodon instances and keep their followers, but migrating from Mastodon to Pleroma is a bit lacking; fortunately, you can still put a redirect on your profile for future followers. TLDR: no, I don't think the fediverse is just like centralized social media.

jonstaab 6y ago

Is it just me, or has "federated" come to mean just mean multi-tenant SaaS (maybe with some features that cross boundaries) that's also open source?

corobo 6y ago
Does ActivityPub not count as federated for you? https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/contribute/activity_pub/ https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/contribute/activity_pub/
detaro 6y ago
Just you. Federation still means communication/collaboration between independently run servers.
mxuribe 6y ago
With all due respect, i think that might just be you. Email has operated as federated for so many years, and while there are certainly large providers like gmail, etc....There are also plenty of non-multi-tenant, non-SaaS instances of email servers (and associated mailboxes).

zimpenfish 6y ago

Got an install up and running on Arch but it required a fair amount of divergence from the installation instructions. (I'll try and whip up a list of what was different later.)

cnr 6y ago

JIT news for polish women (and men) protesting against stripping away abortion rights. The more independent communication apps the better :)

laurent123456 6y ago

Looks like they self-host their source code too: https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/ https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/ It appears to be developed in some language called "Euphoria"?? That's such a strange choice and is going to seriously limit contributions from other developers.

wishinghand 6y ago
Looks like Elixir to me. Not hugely mainstream but I think it's shed its niche status. Which folders have Euphoria in them?
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  They based their code in part on Pleroma per something else I read, which is written in Elixir.
- yorwba 6y ago
  Yeah, their development guide lists Elixir (and Erlang), PostgreSQL and NodeJS as dependencies. https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/contribute/development/#without-docker https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/contribute/development/#witho...
Vosporos 6y ago
What is this “Euphoria” you are talking about?
Seirdy 6y ago
Mobilizon is written in Elixir because it is based on Pleroma, a Mastodon-compatible/Mastodon-alternative server for the Fediverse. Elixir isn't one of the most popular langs out there, but it is far from being a "niche" language. Okay that was a lot of words. Maybe I should explain for those less familiar: Users on the Fediverse can interact without being aware of the fact that their servers are running completely different software. While Fediverse members such as Mastodon take inspiration from Twitter, others have different focuses: Peertube is YouTube inspired, Pixelfed is Instagram-inspired, and some like Pleroma are kinda doing their own thing imo. I personally prefer Pleroma to Mastodon, as evidenced from my bio; it's lightweight, easier to set up, and has a great variety of first- and third-party front-ends (including a lightly-modified version of the Mastodon front-end and a Gopher-accessible one). It appears that Mobilizon devs wanted to create a new Fediverse server with a different focus: something that warranted writing a back-end based on Pleroma instead of just creating a new Pleroma front-end. Basing off Pleroma was a good choice because unlike Mastodon, Pleroma is lightweight enough to run off a singe-board computer like a Raspberry Pi. Being written in Elixir definitely has a lot to do with this.

skratlo 6y ago

It's great to see alternatives popping up everywhere, keep it coming

zanecraw 6y ago

looks pretty dope!

jarofgreen 6y ago

I'm very pleased to see this launch, but have one feature request - and I'm posting it here because it's a request I would make to anyone doing event software. Please have open feeds in iCal format for your site, including one that lets people get all public data. This will make the data on your website so much more reusable and useful. And definetly iCal - it's so popular, and most personal calendars can even import it directly. Yes, it's odd text format is a pain, but there are libraries in almost every language you can use. Mobilizon has iCal export for a single event, but not for all public events on the site. (I did have a Mastodon chat with them about this but can't find their replies now) But definitely congrats to Framasoft for this :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar

glenstein 6y ago
I hadn't thought of this, but this is a great suggestion and I hope your suggestion gets implemented!
rigelk 6y ago
please fill an issue on the forge at https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/-/issues https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/-/issues
- jarofgreen 6y ago
  Done! https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/-/issues/420 https://framagit.org/framasoft/mobilizon/-/issues/420

forgotmypw17 6y ago

What an amazing looking project! I think this type of "someone in the group runs an instance" type deal will become more and more frequent. Each family/community will have a "tech guy" or two who manages this type of thing, maybe on an offline device, and everyone chips in a couple satoshi per year for the hardware and network. If you store your data in something easy like text files, you can even have several redundant devices, all for the price of a couple raspberry pis. Imagine a raspberry pi with a terabyte of storage attached. Certainly that's enough for a "Familybook" of your closest people. This is the type of device I am developing for today. I'm writing the simplest HTML possible, always no-JS friendly, using the most common interfaces supported by the most common web servers, and completely portable with just a zip file of text files. :)

mikeruhl 6y ago

Thank you so much for this. I have wanted something like this since getting off Facebook.