It isn't billed as social media, but might have something in common with Facebook Groups, and might also match the goals of the commercial service, Meetup. We have not used that (trying to rely on Free Software whenever possible. We explored GeTogether. I checked and the last meeting we announced on GeTogether was April. It was Algot (me) who set up our "presence". I've been lazy, and cannot say whether we had any person attend because of that tool. Feeling very guilty, I entered the meeting for November 5, 2020 (when this presentation is scheduled) in order to "seem" up to date.
The Mobilizon tool has been created by Framasoft, a non-profit from France. They have developed this tool as Free Software (open source). It is licensed AGPL3, an online license intended for servers, not for use on your own desktop or laptop. Mobilizon is a Free-libre software. This means its code is transparent, publicly auditable and there are no hidden features.
Mobilizon is "federated" software which means that all of the community run servers around the world can see and get access to announcements from other groups. That is similar to the Mastodon social media tool which has become reasonably successful breaking people loose from the silos of Twitter and Facebook, in particular. Leaving the silos "free" also helps me be less the "product" of those tools.
I choose a server being run here in the United States by a college student whose online name is amolith who tells me that he plans to keep the servers he runs active while he develops skills of a system administrator while in school. If we decide to embrace Mobilizon into our monthly routines, we can consider our server options further. It is possible to run the software on our own, should we wish to do so.
For full involvement by group members need to set up an account. (at the group's server?)
It is easy and links to an email you choose. You will be asked to verify your account request through the automated process. You'll be able to post to the discussion section and possibly more depending on the privileges granted by the administrator of the group (currently me). I don't know what the automatic level is for a new sign up. If we move forward, we can find out together. I have not had the time yet to read through all the Mobilizon documentation.
Proposal: Form a study group of volunteers to join the group and explore it together over the next month or so in order to get a sense of whether to embrace it as a tool for NatickFOSS going forward.
Get involved here: https://events.nixnet.services/
