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Mobilizon – A free, federated tool for events and groups

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Re: Mobilizon – A free, federated tool for events and groups

#31

Post by Spearchucker »

williamtwild wrote: post #14
FourthProtocol wrote: post #10

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 Ge…

Why not just start a blog?

Because it's unweidly. Too verbose. A post is often no more than a sentence or less with a photo.Each comment on an entry would have to be another blog post with it's own attached/linked media. Also tag clouds lack structure. It's difficult to search across blogs (which would delinieate users). You could shoehorn it in, but the blog solution is nothing close to ideal.

Re: Mobilizon – A free, federated tool for events and groups

#32

Post by WC3w6pXxgGd »

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.

Re: Mobilizon – A free, federated tool for events and groups

#33

Post by grey_earthling »

Nextgrid wrote: post #6

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 b…

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

Re: Mobilizon – A free, federated tool for events and groups

#34

Post by meetups323 »

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.

Re: Mobilizon – A free, federated tool for events and groups

#35

Post by hypersoar »

olah_1 wrote: post #25
amelius wrote: post #17

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?

If users have to sign up (create an account) in the traditional flow, I think this is dead in the water :/

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.

Re: Mobilizon – A free, federated tool for events and groups

#36

Post by berkes »

amelius wrote: post #29
olah_1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If users have to sign up (create an account) in the traditional flow, I think this is dead in the water :/

Perhaps some scraper could help with cross-posting of events. The tool can be named Facebook-dl :)

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.

Re: Mobilizon – A free, federated tool for events and groups

#38

Post by dagurp »

Nextgrid wrote: post #6

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 b…

One of the main things keeping me on Facebook is fear of missing out on events. This gives people who are not on Facebook a chance to stay in the loop.

Re: Mobilizon – A free, federated tool for events and groups

#40

Post by Ericson2314 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #6

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 b…

> I feel like this misses the point.

> 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.

The argument by people in favor of this stuff is that federated technologies best avoid and resist those mismatched incentives, because any centralized gatekeeper, not matter how benevolently founded, always has the temptation to ignore it's charter and become a rentier.

Think about the recent .org debacle, or even the Mondragon Corporation employing non-member labor.

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