PubHubs: safe online communities

PubHubs is a new open-source community platform that combines local group conversations via its own adaptation of Matrix with proportional user authentication.

PubHubs forms a (cryptographically) closed network of associated, independent ‘hubs’ that run dedicated Matrix home servers, under a common umbrella. Attribute-based authentication exists in PubHubs at two levels, namely: centrally, for login to PubHubs itself, and thereby to each of the hubs, and decentrally, for logging into specific rooms in hubs.

Apart from this attribute-based authentication, PubHubs generates for each user different (persistent) pseudonyms for different hubs. In this way the activities across different hubs cannot be connected, not even via the central login. The overall aim of the PubHubs (identity) architecture is to provide a suitable combination of privacy protection and accountability.

Team

Toon Toetenel

Project Lead

José van Dijck

Partner

Bart Jacobs

Partner

Interested in this project?

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