ABOUT LIBRES DE CHOIX

Libres de Choix is a general interest association born from a simple observation: freedom and democracy depend not only on proclaimed principles, but on the real possibility of making understandable, informed, reversible, and unconstrained choices.

However, in many areas (digital, informational, media, political, or economic), these conditions are increasingly undermined. Choices exist in appearance, but their implications are opaque, their alternatives are hidden, and their consequences are often irreversible.

Libres de Choix was formed to analyze these mechanisms, make them understandable, and contribute to restoring individual and collective room for maneuver.

Our approach is symbolized by a cairn: a collective stack of stones. Each person contributes their stone. The more contributors there are, the more visible, solid, and useful the cairn becomes.

In rugged or uncertain environments, the cairn does not impose a path: it indicates a direction, helping to orient oneself when usual landmarks disappear.

The compass, our logo, reminds us that orientation is a decision-making tool, not an injunction. Libres de Choix does not dictate choices. We seek to illuminate strategic decisions by making consequences, dependencies, and alternatives visible.

Guide without imposing. Orient without constraining.

We start from several structural observations:

• Technical, economic, and informational dependencies are often built without explicit public debate
• Citizens, organizations, and institutions are increasingly faced with constrained choices, presented as neutral or inevitable
• The confusion between information, communication, and influence weakens democratic capacity
• The growing complexity of systems encourages resignation, blind delegation, or acceptance by default

These dynamics are neither conspiracy nor fate. They are the product of power relations, technical architectures, regulatory frameworks, and dominant narratives that can be analyzed, discussed, and sometimes transformed.

Libres de Choix acts as a space for knowledge production, critical analysis, and debate.

Concretely, we conduct:

• Analysis: work on the real conditions for exercising choice and autonomy
• Training: critical education actions for various audiences
• Production: dissemination of content based on verifiable facts and explicit methods
• Evaluation: analysis of solutions, policies, and technical frameworks
• Network: connecting people and organizations sharing these concerns

We reject oversimplification. Our work clearly distinguishes analysis, opinion, and advocacy, and embraces contradictory debate as a condition of intellectual rigor.

Our commitment is militant, in the noble sense of the term. It aims to defend public freedoms and democratic capacity, without submitting to political, economic, or ideological interests.

But this commitment is based on a non-negotiable requirement for rigor:

• Explicit hypotheses
• Identified sources
• Confrontation of viewpoints
• Refusal of emotion as a substitute for argument

Our democratic governance, strengthened by independence guarantee mechanisms, is designed to protect this requirement over time.

Libres de Choix is neither a withdrawal project nor an ideology of closure. We do not defend sovereignty conceived as the illusion of total self-sufficiency, nor as systematic distrust of others.

Conversely, we are not advocates of submission to existing dependencies, nor of their passive acceptance in the name of realism, efficiency, or inevitability.

We defend another approach, that of strategic autonomy: the ability to choose one's dependencies, to understand their implications, and to have real guarantees allowing one to exit, change, or limit their effects.

Choosing is not refusing all dependence.
Choosing is being able to change it.