The post ANYI: A Dcentralized Social Network System Constituted by Personal Information Units appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>Dehui Chen: This is an idea about a new model of social network, to solve some common problems we have on the current social network platforms, such as data safety, the life span of personal data, distribution of personal data, fake news…this new model can also bring new features that we have never experienced until now.
General principle: Like physical properties, An individual should have full authority of his/her personal information, including personal data, social relationships, and so on.
Goal: To improve the social network both online and offline by rebuilding the relationships among the individuals, based on personal information units.
We are enjoying the excellent benefit and convenience of the rapid development of the Internet and various technologies both online and offline. However there are still many outdated processes and new problems which are followed by the rapid changes.
To solve these above mentioned issues, We strongly believe that the ANYI network system is the best solution.
Personal information unit is the basic element of ANYI network system. (hereinafter collectively referred to as ‘node’) The nodes are interconnected by peer-to-peer network technology (P2P) to form ANYI social network.
The node is composed of two parts: data and software (processing of data). In order to secure the data, the software part should be subdivided into two layers: intermediate layer and application layer.
The asymmetric cryptography technology is used to ensure the security of data storage and transmission, and the public key is used as the unique ID for the node in ANYI network.
The peer-to-peer network technology is used to realize direct communication among nodes by unified interaction rules, and center server is not needed anymore.
Individuals manage their own personal information autonomously; ANYI community customizes and maintains the interaction rules. The software that obeys the rules can be freely provided by any software vendor. No one can access or use any data without node owner’s permission.
Personal data are only controlled by the node owner.
Data are independent of the application and users can freely choose applicaions to manage the data.
The data are divided into personal information (personal basic information, resource information, social information, access control, etc.) and ANYI network system setting information. Personal information is stored encrypted, the items is stored in a key-value form and the item-keys are uniformed defined. The owner can store any information on the node, including the information from outside.
ANYI node uses asymmetric cryptography technology to secure data. We also use the public key of the asymmetric cryptography as infividual’s ID at ANYI network. The ID will be used when building new relationships, sending/receiving messages with other nodes, and manage the access control. Moreover, multiple IDs can be derived from the original ID, to satisfy the anonymity requirements fo certain scenarios.
The intermediate layer is responsible for data processing, network interface and application software layer interfaces.
In the aspect of data, the intermediate layer realizes encryption/decryption of data and accesses data by using item-keys; In the aspect of interaction with the network, the common interaction interface of ANYI network should be realized; In the user interface aspect, the intermediate layer encapsulates data and keys to provide basic functional interfaces to the application layer.
The application layer uses the interfaces provided by the intermediate layer to perform data processing and network interaction, and provides a user-friendly operation interface.
To ensure security, the application layer does neither directly process data and keys, nor interact with the network directly.
ANYI network system runs on a peer-to-peer network protocol and adheres to the following rules to ensure network communication:
Information exchange rules between personal nodes:
ANYI network system implements social functions by obeying the common interaction rules in the real world. User ID (The public key of the asymmetric cryptography) serves as the core part for the functions.
The two individuals establish the relationship by exchanging IDs, and manage the authorities and groups by using ID.
Messages for a certain node are encrypted. The sender encrypts the message with the recipient’s ID, a signature generated by the sender’s private key is also attached. The receiver can decrypt the message with his private key and verify the signature to confirm the message is not from a impostor.
Groups can be created and managed freely.
The group management is also based on IDs. There could be multiple administrators, and rules of the group can be freely customized. There will be no more limit from any platform, such as maximum number limit of members.
The sender uses the hashcode generated by all members’ ID to encrypt group messages, using a multi-signature rule (1-N) with a threshold of 1, so any member who contributed to the hashcode can decrypt the group message.
Personal daily life information can usually be divided into the following categories:
The life circles and targets of the above information are different. ANYI nodes can manage different kinds of information by classification and authority designation for each category.
For resource information, it is necessary to obey appropriate rules so that others can judge if the resource is still avalible. Generally, time, period, location, target people and conditions should be clear. The appropriate rules for different field will not be the same, ANYI community will keep on improving them.
Within the permission scope, the node can obtain real-time information updates of other nodes, and can search with keywords for certain resource information in the personal social network scope. Every node maintains their own node well, post resource to share with family or other scopes. So everyone can get precious resouce information based on trust.
Reputation is an extremely important part of human social activities. Credit management in business has a long history. Personal credit management in the financial industry involves almost every social individual.
However, we don’t have a social product that can help managing and circulating dignified information in the daily lives. Offline people can only use reputation information in their social networks occasionally. People often miss opportunities or suffer losses because they can not get reputation information timely and effectively. This also provides huge space for continued scams and fraudulent business activities.
ANYI network system seeks to achieve the circulation of reputation information:
The circulation of reputation can make people in social networks more self-disciplined, enable people to be able to identify a new face by referring to the reputation info from the proper network scope. The circulation of reputation can help to identify and mark the fake news and the creator, can amplify the influence of reputation and can also affect the development of the real society.
As the amounts of information is increasing so fast that people can not catch up with it. People are losing the control of massive information. Currently we are involved in more and more social relationships. It is necessary for us to start managing information around us.
ANYI node supports flexible authority management which is based on the public keys(ID). We can manage the authority by minimum unit(each information item).
Submitting personal information by means of paper or electronic forms is a very common routine. This is necessary but cumbersome, and it is easy to become a bottleneck in busy places such as airports. It will be worst if hand mistakes happen.
ANYI network system can improve this interaction. Using ANYI System, an individual can finish the submission by clicking one button.
Advantages:
Standardization:
Users have the right to know why these data are collected and how these
data will be used. There should also be regulations to make sure the
data are properly collected and used.
Once one person has a node It means he has at least one ID that
uniquely identifies himself. The ID can be used to establish
relationships with organizations in daily life.
Sensitive information such as name, address, phone number, email, etc.
are not necessary anymore in such cases. It will become safer because
the frequency of sensitive information usage will be significantly
reduced. Correspondingly, the organizations side can also save cost on
keeping sensitive information.
On the other hand, the ID can take place of the entity membership cards or point cards. It does’n only eliminate the cumbersome card management for individuals, but also saves the costs around card issuance.
At the moment, our basic information is scattered in various organizations such as banks, insurance companies, government departments etc. When the basic information changes, we have to inform the organizations of the change one by one. And because we can not list up all the concerned organizations easily, it is possible that we forget some less important organizations like online shops. So we will be affected correspondingly, and the organizations also suffer the loss caused by the outdated data.
ANYI network system can solve this problem by this way:
The organizations stop storing customers’ data. They request the data from individual nodes if necessary.
Advantages:
We are used to more and more information services, such as online music, e-books, online education, insurance and so on. These services are our assets. However, we can not deal with such assets like the tangible assets, such as the exchange of ownerships.
Why can’t we sell/give an e-book or music to others?
In ANYI network system, we can use node ID to declare the ownership of
the information assets, and the exchage of the ownerships can be
realized through a change of the owner ID.
Let us take the online e-book as an example to explain how to realize it:
When the platform delivers a book to a purchaser A, First the platform uses A’s public key to declare that the e-book belongs to A, and encrypts the e-book with A’s public key. In this way, only A can decrypt the e-book.
When A wants to give/sell the e-book to B, A requests the platform to change the owner to B. After the platform verifies the ownership of A, the platform uses B’s pulbic key to re-declare the owner of the e-book and re-encrypts the e-book with B’s public key.
As a result, the e-book is available for the new owner, meanwhile the former owner of the e-book can not decrypt the e-book anymore.
Similarly, physical assets can also be managed by this mode. Because
there is no easy-to-copy feature, the transfer of physical assets is
simpler.
Furthermore, the manuals, quality guarantees, etc. of physical products
can aslo exist in form of electronic information in ANYI network system.
So we can get rid of the management of mass appendant materials of
various products.
In addition to the cases above, there should be much more possibilities in all aspects of our daily lives. In current information era. the individuals are fragmented:
The personal node model of ANYI network system ensures personal priority. Individuals are able to collect all the information regularly, so that we can manage all the transaction information and points status across the organizations in the e-commerce aspect; We can check and use our own health information; We can manage social relationships naturally without being restricted by any third-party platforms; And also, referring clearly to studying our history data, we can adjust how to study in a better way.
On the internet world,the equality with the organizations ensures that we get back our own rights for information. Based on this, I believe everyone will enjoy a better life.
Individual users are not free to migrate data between different
social platforms. They cannot freely sell/give out information resources
(such as music and e-books) they purchased. Users are enduring the
risks of personal information being abused and leaked. Legitimate
decision-making changes of commercial companies may affect ordinary
users seriously(such as the termination of Email service).
These restrictions and risks on users are the inevitable outcome of the
commercial centralization model. Without revolutionary change, the
status quo cannot be changed or even prevented from deterioration.
The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) issued by the EU declares the rules for business and organizations and rights for citizens, However, GDPR only restricts enterprises by punishment after bad things happened, there is no effective damage recovery measures.
ANYI network system separates personal data from business platforms, individuals will not be so seriously influenced by the business organizations whatever happen on the business organization side.
The controversies about who is the data owner and who has right to control data also can be settled easily.
As per mentioned in 3.2.1, we need professional judgement if the items collected are reasonable. We need the corresponding legal protection. The legitimate enforcement agency is needed when the information asset is treated the same as the properties. When keys are lost or stolen, we need a mechanism to help recover the control of our own nodes. ANYI network system also requires a real-name authentication mechanism to meet some certain needs.
In conclusion, we need legal lawmakers and law enforcers to protect and manage the world of information assets. This responsibility should only be taken by the governments.
Limited by the development of hardware and technology, the
server-serving mode(both the client-sever mode and the browser-server
mode) of software applications is the best long term solution.
Commercial companies provided the resources that not everyone can
afford, such as, storage, computing, security and so on that almost
everyone can enjoy the applications easily.
However, In such server-serving structures, almost all the users’ data
are stored on the servers. There is no independent existence of
individuals on the internet. People are fragments around the platforms
and anyone could be heavily influenced by the changes of the center
platform, even if the changes are legit. Everyone can not collect all
the personal data easily. It is impossible to build a real personal
priority internet enviroment. As of now it is hard to say that we can
continue to improve well in such condition.
Currently, we have got all the necessary conditions of hardware and technology to go without center-platforms. These are the following:
ANYI network system hopes to establish a new network that is reliable, persistent, efficient and reasonable to people’s lives.
The post ANYI: A Dcentralized Social Network System Constituted by Personal Information Units appeared first on P2P Foundation.
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