The first attempt to implement librevents was to be a prototype that would allow us to test the hypothesis. A sequence of small scripts were developed that are part of a package called mobilizon-poster. These scripts handle file containing events and support the user in posting them to mobilizon. The librevents package instead, accesses Facebook to collect the most recent events and producing file compatible with the aforementioned scripts.

Librevents (version June 2021)

Perhaps you need to return back in time with git reset because these scripts might not work on future versions.

git clone git@github.com/tracking-exposed/librevent.git
cd librevent/automation
npm install

First step: produce the pointers file

Requirement you need to know which facebook page you want to copy the events from, in this case about://blank has a page reachable at the URL https://www.facebook.com/about.party/, and with the /events/ suffix you’ll get the public event list.

Requirement you should create a directory, in the example below, is liberator1; that’s the name of the directory guardoni would created, and it is equivalent to a chromium –user-data-dir.

Claudio@bluelizard MINGW64 ~/VMShared/librevent/automation (main)
$ DEBUG=*,-puppeteer* src/guardoni.js --page https://www.facebook.com/about.party/events/ --profile liberator1
  guardoni:events Directive built: [
  {
    "loadFor": 12000,
    "url": "https://mbasic.facebook.com/about.party/events/",
    "fblinktype": "events-page",
    "pageId": "about.party",
    "quintrex": true
  }
  ...

This should open a browser with a facebook event page, on mbasic interface, therefore don’t expect the typical nice graphic design (but doesn’t matter for our scope).

$ ls -ltr pointers/
total 15
-rw-r--r-- 1 Claudio 197609 1398 Jun 17 19:43 2021-06-17+19-43+events-page+isuog.org.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 Claudio 197609  503 Jun 17 20:01 2021-06-17+20-01+events-page+UptownFoodTruckFestival.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 Claudio 197609  139 Jun 18 07:14 2021-06-18+07-14+events-page+reclaimclubculture.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 Claudio 197609  256 Aug 25 09:48 2021-08-25+09-48+events-page+LCIResearch.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 Claudio 197609  139 Aug 26 11:09 2021-08-26+11-09+events-page+radicalfilmnetwork.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 Claudio 197609  227 Oct 10 19:07 2021-10-10+19-07+events-page+about.party.json

Above you see JSON files produced by this first access, let’s check the content:

$ cd pointers/
$ cat 2021-10-10+19-07+events-page+about.party.json
{
  "eventHrefs": [
    "/events/568047841065828",
    "/events/978302766078234",
    "/events/4355011024613734",
    "/events/6014533291950654"
  ],
  "screenshot": "screencapts\\2021-10-10+19-07+events-page+about.party.png"
}

The so-called pointer files have direct links on the event page; you also have a screenshot helpful in the case you want to double check the quality of the scraping.

Second step: acquire the event from the pointers

$ DEBUG=*,-puppeteer* node src/guardoni.js --pointer pointers/2021-10-10+19-07+events-page+about.party.json --profile liberator1
  guardoni:events Loading content and parsing JSON from pointers/2021-10-10+19-07+events-page+about.party.json +0ms
  guardoni:events Directive built: [
  {
    "url": "https://mbasic.facebook.com/events/568047841065828",
    "loadFor": 12000,
    "fblinktype": "events",
    "eventId": "568047841065828",
    "quintrex": true
  } {...}
  guardoni:events Downloaded picture in undefined +12s
  guardoni:events Screenshot saved as screencapts\978302766078234_2021-10-10-19-54.png +384ms

This script produce one log

$ cat evdetails/978302766078234_2021-10-10-19-54.json
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "Event",
  "startDate": "2021-10-16T12:00:00+0200",
  "eventAttendanceMode": "",
  "name": "ALLER ENDE ANFANG x sektgarten",
  "url": "https://it-it.facebook.com/events/about-party/aller-ende-anfang-x-sektgarten/978302766078234/",
  "location": {
    "@type": "Place",
    "name": "://about party",
    "address": {
      "@type": "PostalAddress",
      "addressCountry": "DE",
      "addressLocality": "Berlino, Germania",
      "postalCode": "10245",
      "streetAddress": "Markgrafendamm 24c"
    }
  },
  "description": "// den letzten ...",
  "image": "https://scontent.fmxp6-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/cp0/e15/q65/c103.0.206.206a/p206x206/241691176_1485956268427390_1054258159267620724_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=b386c4&_nc_ohc=HQzJYhPLHM4AX-P-R7f&_nc_ht=scontent.fmxp6-1.fna&oh=72a10122ffbbf79ba3a669a9934d277b&oe=61687D6A",
  "performers": [],
  "screenshot": "screencapts\\978302766078234_2021-10-10-19-54.png"
}

mobilizon-poster

requirements: nodejs, git.

git clone https://github.com/vecna/mobilizon-poster
cd mobilizon-poster
npm install

Components

• poster: the script to actually post content to mobilizon
• deleter the tool to remove an event submitted via mobilizon-poster (this is important, this tool don’t delete events that aren’t tracked as local activities)
• ical: the tool that import an ical in the JSON format used internally

The local activities are saved in eventlog/*.json and they are mean to allow event updates, as in this way you can keep track of timings and ID.