PubHubs: Secure online communities for public values

PubHubs is a new community network emerging from The Netherlands, built on public values such as safety, privacy, transparency, sovereignty and accountability. There are no advertisements on PubHubs, and no associated mechanisms to profile users or to keep them trapped in rabbit holes.

PubHubs tries to realise the original ideals of the internet about connecting people, without all the negativity that is now so often associated with online contact. PubHubs is not a place where people can shout out anything, no matter how offensive, insulting or detrimental to others. It is not about pushing freedom of speech to the extreme. PubHubs is more about valuable human contacts and about human dignity. It tries to mimick real-life local communities online, where people who are (coming close to) violating the norms of the community are told about this, preferably in a wise manner, and where actual, persistent violations may have consequences, for instance in terms of (temporary) bans. In abstract terms, PubHub aims to combine online privacy and accountability.

Unlike global, ad-driven platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, PubHubs offers a community-focused alternative. Each participating organization manages its own Hub: a local online space with customizable rooms where participants can safely communicate, share information, or collaborate, publicly or privately, with or without identity verification. Examples of such organizations are schools, patient associations, libraries, health care institutions, local and regional governments, sports clubs, but also companies that wish to have secure channels for internal contacts or for external contacts with their customers. Participating organizations benefit from a recognizable wider setting and from the trust in it.

PubHubs offers certainties. The conversation spaces (Rooms) in Hubs can be secured, so that only certain individuals can participate, in so-called “secure” Rooms. This access control can be light, for instance in neighboorhood Rooms where you need to prove via disclosure of your postal code that you actually live in the neighboorhoud. Also, it can be required that prove that you work for a particular organization, by disclosing your email address at this organization, before you can enter a particular Room. Even more specifically, entering a secure Room may only be possible when your email address occurs on a specific list, for instance of members of an association, department, board or council.

For disclosing such personal information about yourself, PubHubs uses a separate app, called Yivi. Yivi is privacy-friendly and based on attributes: properties about you, such as name, address, phone number, date of birth, etc. Each Hub determines the attributes that are required for access to its Rooms, in line with its own norms, traditions and responsibilities.

The software behind PubHubs is open source, but the network is closed: in order to operate under the login-umbrella of PubHubs, organizations have to be registered, and also have to pay a subscription fee.

PubHubs started as a project within Radboud University at Nijmegen, The Netherlands, within the research group of Prof. Jacobs. PubHubs is partly still under development at the university, but has also strated a trajectory towards independent existence. PubHubs is in a phase where interested organizations can start to set up their own Hub.

Interested to learn more or join? Contact us at contact@pubhubs.net.