path: root/doc/about/about_hubzilla.html

<h1 id="project">Project</h1>
<p>
    Hubzilla is a decentralized communication network, which aims to provide communication that is censorship-resistant, privacy-respecting, and thus free from the oppressive claws of contemporary corporate communication giants. These giants function primarily as spy networks for paying clients of all sorts and types, in addition to monopolizing and centralizing the Internet; a feature that was not part of the original and revolutionary goals that produced the World Wide Web. <br><br>Hubzilla is free and open source.&nbsp;&nbsp;It is designed to scale from a $35 Raspberry Pi, to top of the line AMD and Intel Xeon-powered multi-core enterprise servers.&nbsp;&nbsp;It can be used to support communication between a few individuals, or scale to many thousands and more.<br><br>Hubzilla aims to be skill and resource agnostic. It is easy to use by everyday computer users, as well as by systems administrators and developers. <br><br>How you use it depends on how you want to use it. <br><br>It is written in the PHP scripting language, thus making it trivial to install on any hosting platform in use today. This includes self-hosting at home, at hosting providers such as <a href="http://mediatemple.com/">Media Temple</a> and <a href="http://www.dreamhost.com/">Dreamhost</a>, or on virtual and dedicated servers, offered by the likes of <a href="https://www.linode.com">Linode</a>,&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://greenqloud.com">GreenQloud</a> or <a href="https://aws.amazon.com">Amazon AWS</a>.<br><br>In other words, Hubzilla can run on any computing platform that comes with a web server, a MySQL-compatible database, and the PHP scripting language. <br><br>Along the way, Hubzilla offers a number of unique goodies: <br><br><strong>Single-click user identification:</strong> meaning you can access sites on Hubzilla simply by clicking on links to remote sites. Authentication just happens automagically behind the scenes. Forget about remembering multiple user names with multiple passwords when accessing different sites online.<br><br><strong>Cloning:</strong> of online identities. Your online presence no longer has to be tied to a single server, domain name or IP address.&nbsp;&nbsp;You can clone and import your identity (or channel as we call it) to another server (or, a hub as servers are known in Hubzilla).&nbsp;&nbsp;Now, should your primary hub go down, no worries, your contacts, posts<em>*</em>, and messages<em>*</em> will automagically continue to be available and accessible under your cloned channel. <em>(*: only posts and messages as from the moment you cloned your channel)</em><br><br><strong>Privacy:</strong> Hubzilla identities (Zot IDs) can be deleted, backed up/downloaded, and cloned.&nbsp;&nbsp;The user is in full control of their data. Should you decide to delete all your content and erase your Zot ID, all you have to do is click on a link and it's immediately deleted from the hub.&nbsp;&nbsp;No questions, no fuss.
</p>

<h2 id="project-history">History</h2>


<p>Hubzilla is a community developed open source project based on work introduced in Friendica by the Friendica
community and which previously was named Redmatrix. The core design, the project mission, and software base itself were
created/written primarily by Mike Macgirvin and represent the culmination of over a decade of software design using
variations of this platform and an evolving vision of the role of communication software in our lives. Many others have
contributed to this work, both conceptually and in terms of actual code (far too many to list individually).</p>

<h3>Mike Macgirvin -- Biography</h3>

<p>Mike Macgirvin is an American software engineer now living in Australia. He spent his early adult years designing and
repairing semiconductor fabrication equipment for a number of companies as a self-described "machine wizard". In 1985 he
became a research engineer at Stanford University for the Gravity Probe-B space mission and soon became a Unix systems
administrator writing communication software and utilities; and becoming an expert in emerging internet technologies
such as the now ubiquitous "World Wide Web". He authored an email "client" called "ML" which pioneered some advanced
concepts in encryption, the ability to filter message streams into different "views", and multi-protocol support; and
was an active proponent of and participant in the open source software <em>movement</em>. In 1996 he went to Netscape
Communications to become tech lead on their Messaging Server and integrate this with Collabra (groupware) into a
comprehensive communications server package. He stayed on after Netscape was acquired by America Online and was tech
manager of the Groups@AOL project until 2001.</p>

<p>During a layoff round, Mike was let go from America Online in August 2001 and purchased a music store in Mountain
View, California later to be known as "Sonica Music Company". Opening a retail store for non-essential goods at the
beginning of a prolonged economic downturn was in retrospect probably not the wisest career move. Sonica eventually
folded; in late 2006. Mike returned to working on software and systems support full-time and was employed briefly at
Symantec before moving to Australia in early 2007. He currently lives on a farm "out in the middle of nowhere" and is
employed as a Computer Systems Officer at the University of Wollongong.</p>

<h3>Hubzilla - The Early Years</h3>

<p>The software which went into creating Hubzilla has been through several distinct historical phases. It began in 2003
when Mike Macgirvin was looking for a content management system to power the website for his music store and found the
available solutions to be lacking in various respects. The project was born as the "PurpleHaze weblog" under the nom de
plume "Nerdware Communications". It was a multi-user PHP/MySQL CMS which provided blogs, forums, photo albums, events
and more. Initially it provided the basis for a social community and shopping for customers of the store, but was also
linked to Mike's personal weblog running on another domain. The distinguishing characteristic of this software was the
ability for so-called "normal users" to re-assemble the components and choose different content feeds - and in essence
create their own personal "multi-user CMS" as a view. Their custom view was able to communicate with anybody else that
used the system, but could be partitioned so that adult sites and motorcycle enthusiast sites would not be visible to
each other and not clash (or in this case Mike's personal website and the music store website). This software was
developed primarily from 2003 until 2008.</p>

<p>In 2006 this software was used as the prototype for Symantec's "safeweb" reputation and community site. It was
developed and enhanced until about 2008. A rewrite took place in 2008 named "Reflection" but work stagnated as the
community dwindled. The need for content management systems and communications software dropped dramatically during this
time as humans flocked to the new social aggregrators - Facebook and Twitter.</p>

<h3>Mistpark/Friendica</h3>

<p>In early 2010, Mike left Facebook, concerned at the company's increasing hold and control of personal information. In
his words "Companies die. We watched it happen in the dot-com years. When they do, their databases are sold to the
highest bidder.". Mike used some remnants of the old CMS project to create a decentralised social communications
platform. This was launched in July 2010 as "Mistpark". The name was chosen as a tribute to his new home in the Southern
Highlands of Australia. The key innovation in this project was the ability to authenticate remotely and invisibly to
other decentralised instances of the software so to allow remote viewing of private photos and provide "wall-to-wall"
posting across website instances. The lack of simple remote identity <em>provenance</em> was a serious limitation of
other decentralised communication protocols.</p>

<p>In late 2010, the name was changed to "Friendika". The name Friendika had some symbolic issues, since the suffix was
common with "swastika" and "Amerika", both having negative connotations, however the dot-com domain was available.
Friendica was in fact the first choice but the 'friendica.com' domain name was already registered. It became available a
year later and the project was renamed to Friendica in late 2011.</p>

<p>Soon after version 1 was released in July 2010 - providing basic social communications, the software also took on a
new role - cross-service federation; which was first introduced in August and September 2010. Federation allowed the
software to "behave as" a StatusNet site and friends and messages could communicate to the other service from their own
platforms. It was also hoped to provide federation with Diaspora - a project with similar scope being developed in
secret in New York and first released in November of that year. Over the course of the next year, the federation ability
was extended to provide integrated communications from RSS feeds, to and from email, StatusNet, Facebook, Twitter, and
the emerging Diaspora project. The software provided a single "view" of your entire social space no matter what provider
you or your friends used. StatusNet and Diaspora were supported natively so that one account could access any of these
services. Facebook and Twitter used "API federation" which required the person to have an account on those services with
which to link.</p>

<p>By July 2012, Twitter and Facebook had both changed their terms of service and essentially outlawed "API federation"
in the way Friendica was using it. Diaspora announced they were changing their protocol and would not maintain
compatibility nor provide any warning when compatibility would break (or documentation on the proposed changes). The
creator of StatusNet was also leaving his project to create something new (pump.io). As the software's primary purpose
by this time was "federation of different social services into one interface", this created a bit of a crisis. The
federated social web was crumbling. Also of concern was that independent and decentralised social websites shut down
frequently, requiring all their members to start over again on another site. Often the effort involved to do this seemed
daunting - and many people ran back to the relative safety of the large corporate providers - Facebook, Twitter, and now
Google+.</p>

<p>Mike realised he did not want to be held hostage to the decisions that other projects and companies and independent
websites make. Friendica could operate on its own without attaching to these other networks, but its vision and
implementation of a federated social world depended on federation with others for its project identity - so this created
an identity crisis.</p>

<p>Mike had been working on this project for some time and there were a number of things which needed re-writing,
including the base communication protocol which Friendica used (DFRN or the "Distributed Friends and Relations Network"
protocol). These ideas were starting to emerge as a different method of communication he called "zot". Zot began as a
way to create a common language for federated websites, but there was no interest in this ability and as mentioned, the
federated web was crumbling. The first version was soon scrapped and zot was re-designed and re-ignited as a streamlined
communication protocol which was location-independent; e.g. not tied to any website. This would allow people to carry on
unaffected if their website operator shut down temporarily or permanently. They wouldn't have to make friends all over
again, and permissions of everything on the system wouldn't have to be changed to allow bob@site1 to see something that
was private to him, even though he was now bob@site2. This was a serious problem with decentralisation. People moved and
their online identities were lost and had to be re-created from scratch and existing relationships destroyed and had to
be created all over again.</p>

<h3>Redmatrix</h3>

<p>In July 2012, Mike left the Friendica project and began development of "zot" and a new base project called "red" in
his somewhat elusive <em>spare time</em>. Red is Spanish for "network". It wasn't really a "social network" and
especially not a "federated social network". It was just Red (technically "la red"), or "the network". Work began by
removing all the "federation" components and going back to basics - communication and remote authentication. It was a
major re-write and took roughly six months before even basic communication was re-established. It was also no longer
compatible with Friendica - which had been given to the "Friendica community" and by this time (December 2012) was
developing separately on its own track.</p>

<p>It became clear during this time that the single most compelling feature of the project wasn't the social network at
all, but the authentication layer and decentralised access control mechanisms. Combined with zot's location independence
it created a new model for software which had never existed previously - decentralised identity-aware web publishing and
single sign-on to any compatible provider across the web. These weren't <em>evolutionary</em>, they were
<strong>revolutionary</strong>. One of the biggest flaws of the modern web is the reliance on different passwords for
every service you use, or reliance on a single provider if you were to tie them to - say your Facebook login. Facebook
can remove your account at any time. Gone. If you rely on their authentication for all your websites, your entire online
identity - now gone. This is also what was missing from Friendica - a compelling software feature which could stand on
its own, without requiring a social network and especially without requiring a federated social network with all the
mentioned external dependencies.</p>

<p>An early visitor to the project noted that he had some difficulty finding the project on Google because of the choice
of name - "red". Yes, this was a poor decision in retrospect. We were buried on page 23,712 of the search results. The
concept that was emerging around this identity-aware publishing was that of "a matrix of inter-connected thought
streams", since we didn't have a concept of "people" and "friends". All were just connected "channels" with different
ways to connect. So "Redmatrix" was chosen to give it a searchable name. It had nothing to do with the Matrix film and
red and blue pills, though that is frequently cited (erronously); and in fact isn't a bad analogy.</p>

<p>The concept of identity-aware content was alien to anything that existed previously on the web, so to make it useful
we had to provide the ability to use it for content. It needed content publishing tools. This brought back concepts from
the old "Content Management System" on which the software was originally based. To get it up and running quickly we
created a markup language for webpages called "Comanche" which let you describe a page in high-level terms based on
bbcode tags. We also added WebDAV so you could put decentralised access control on files and drag/drop from your
operating system. So now you could have private photos, webpages, files, events, conversations, chatrooms - and they are
visible to those you choose - no matter what site they use. All they need is zot. And your viewers could move to another
site or just pop up at a different site any time they want and we don't care. And it <strong>also</strong> had a
built-in social network; with lots of additional privacy and encryption features which were added even before the
Snowden revelations gave them added urgency.</p>

<p>Over time a few federation components re-emerged. The ability to view RSS feeds was important to many people.
Diaspora never really managed to re-write their protocol, so that was re-implemented and allowed Redmatrix to connect
with Diaspora and Friendica again (Friendica still had their Diaspora protocol intact, so this was the most common
language now remaining on the free web - despite its faults). Diaspora communications aren't able to make use of the
advanced identity features, but they work for basic communications.</p>

<h3>Hubzilla</h3>

<p>The Redmatrix project reached a point of stagnation in early 2015 as network growth leveled and active interest in
the project declined. Mike met with several external high tech developers and innovators in a round of discussions that
were called "Zotopia" in early 2015 to perform an independent review of the project and try to identify what had gone
wrong and plan a route forward. The basic consensus is that the project suffered from bad marketing decisions which were
compounded by mixed messages about the project goals and target audience. A "rival" project (Diaspora) was marketing
itself as a Facebook competitor, but after some long discussions it was determined that Redmatrix wasn't a Facebook
competitor at all, and too much emphasis was being placed on the "social network" and "anti-Facebook" features. It was a
novel decentralisation platform with distributed identity and permissions, and as was pointed out, the "end user" was
the wrong target market. These marketing mistakes were now identified with the project name and random sampling of
various "customers" showed that none of them really had a clue about the software goals or target market segment. The
mixed messages were associated with the brand identity and this was a problem.</p>

<p>The Redmatrix community held a vote and the project was renamed "Hubzilla", with a renewed identity and focus - to
provide software for creating and ultimately linking together unrelated community websites or "hubs" into a global
community. This is in fact what we were building all along, but didn't fully recognise it. The target audience for this
software as it turns out is not the members or end users, but software integrators and digital community architects and
builders. These in turn will be responsible for marketing their own product (their respective online communities) to
end-users or members. The software solves a real world need of linking isolated and "walled garden" community sites
together into a larger cooperative. The transition from Redmatrix to Hubzilla was complex and has taken several months
as we consolidated the marketing and media assets to deliver a consistent message. It is still ongoing at this time, and
should be completed in Q4 2015.</p>

<p>Mike stepped down as active coordinator for the project in early 2015 and turned management over to the community. He
remains active as a Hubzilla developer.</p>

<h3>And Then...</h3>

<p>In 2016, the project was re-architected to support multiple server "roles". These correspond to sub-projects which
can be isolated from each other in terms of supported feature sets, but all use and support the same code-base and
developers are able to work together on common features and goals. The roles primarily differ in target audience,
project <a href="help/project/governance">governance</a> and decision making structures, and this results in slightly
different features and idealogy. They all share a common code repository.</p>

<p>Those roles are:</p>

<h4>Basic</h4>

<p>Entry level server. Supported by and governed by the Hubzilla community. Most advanced or complex features have been
stripped away to ease federation with external services. It is best suited as a FOSS social network tool.</p>

<h4>Standard</h4>

<p>The standard Hubzilla server. This provides a wide range of useful features and is supported by and governed by the
Hubzilla community. It is best suited as an open source community and cloud server.</p>

<h4>Pro</h4>

<p>This is a specially crafted server with a unique feature set. It is supported by and governed by Mike Macgirvin dba
"Zotlabs". Federation with external services has been stripped away in order to support a wide range of more technically
advanced and complex features; and also includes features and modes which may not have the support or backing of the
Hubzilla open source community. It is best suited for business and workplace applications.</p>



<h2 id="project-governance">Governance</h2>

<p>Governance relates to the management of a project and particularly how this relates to conflict
resolution.</p><p>This project uses a dual-governance model.</p><p>The project as a whole and the repository were
created initially by Mike Macgirvin; who controls the project copyright, and the project license, and manages the
project as a Self Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life. He holds veto power over any project proposal or decision and
his word is final.</p><p>That said, Mike has no interest in running the day to day activities of the project and
influencing its direction, other than to protect his own work from sabotage. </p><p>The internal project structure
contains multiple "configurations" known as 'basic', 'standard', and 'pro'. Mike's veto power extends to any proposal or
decision which he feels might adversely affect the 'pro' configuration.</p><p>The 'basic and 'standard' configurations
are controlled completely by the community. If the proposal or decision is crafted in such a way that its effects are
limited to these configurations, Mike will consider relinquishing his power of veto and convert it to a normal community
vote.</p><p>Mario Vavti has done an incredible amount of work on the usability and theming of the project and holds
veto power over any proposal or decision which might impact usability and "look and feel"; and his decision is also
final. </p><p>Mario's veto power is likewise restricted to anything using the standard project 'theme'. If a new theme
is created and an otherwise vetoed decision is implemented entirely in this different theme and has no impact on the
standard project theme, his veto <strong>may</strong> also be turned into a normal community vote.</p><p>This ability
to work around a veto is at the discretion of Mike and Mario. They <strong>may</strong> choose to relinquish their veto
if the scope of the work is limited as described above, and in most circumstances they will leave the decision to the
community. They are not obligated to do so. </p><p><h3>Community Governance</h3></p><p>Beyond those two special cases,
the project is maintained and decisions made by the 'community'. The governance structure is still evolving. Until the
structure is finalised, decisions are made in the following order:</p><p><ul class="listdecimal"
style="list-style-type: decimal;"><br><li> Lazy Consensus</p><p>If a project proposal is made to one of the community
governance forums and there are no serious objections in a "reasonable" amount of time from date of proposal (we usually
provide 2-3 days for all interested parties to weigh in), no vote needs to be taken and the proposal will be considered
approved. Some concerns may be raised at this time, but if these are addressed during discussion and work-arounds
provided, it will still be considered approved. </p><p></li><li> Veto</p><p>If a proposal is vetoed, it is not
necessarily the final word. See above on how to convert a veto into a normal community vote. This can be done by framing
the proposal so that it does not impact the 'pro' configuration or the standard theme.</p><p></li><li> Community
Vote</p><p>A decision which does not have a clear mandate or clear consensus, but is not vetoed, can be taken to a
community vote. At present this is a simple popular vote in one of the applicable community forums.&nbsp;&nbsp;At this
time, popular vote decides the outcome. This may change in the future if the community adopts a 'council' governance
model. This document will be updated at that time with the updated governance rules. <br></li></ul></p><p>Community
Voting does not always provide a pleasant outcome and can generate polarised factions in the community (hence the reason
why other models are under consideration). If the proposal is 'down voted' there are still several things which can be
done and the proposal re-submitted with slightly different parameters (convert to an addon, convert to an optional
feature which is disabled by default, etc.). If interest in the feature is high and the vote is "close", it can generate
lots of bad feelings amongst the losing voters. On such close votes, it is <strong>strongly recommended</strong> that
the proposer take steps to address any concerns that were raised and re-submit.</p>
	


<h2 id="project-privacy-policy">Privacy Policy</h2>

<h3>Summary</h3>

<p>Q: Who can see my content?</p>

<p>A: By default ANYBODY on the internet, UNLESS you restrict it. Hubzilla allows you to choose the privacy level you desire. Restricted content will NOT be visible to "spy networks" and advertisers. It will be protected against eavesdropping by outsiders - to the best of our ability. Hub administrators with sufficient skills and patience MAY be able to eavesdrop on some private communications but they must expend effort to do so. Privacy modes exist within Hubzilla which are even resistant to eavesdropping by skilled and determined hub administrators.</p>

<p>Q: Can my content be censored?</p>

<p>A: Hubzilla (the network) CANNOT censor your content. Server and hub administrators are subject to local laws and MAY remove objectionable content from their site/hub. Anybody MAY become a hub administrator, including you; and therefore publish content which might otherwise be censored. You still MAY be subject to local laws.</p>

<h3>Definitions</h3>

<p><strong>Hubzilla</strong></p>

<p>Otherwise referred to as "the network", Hubzilla is a collection of individual computers/servers (aka <strong>hubs</strong>) which connect together to form a larger cooperative network.</p>

<p><strong>hub</strong></p>

<p>An individual computer or server connected to Hubzilla. These are provided by a <strong>hub administrator</strong> and may be public or private, paid or free.</p>

<p><strong>hub administrator</strong></p>

<p>The system operator of an individual hub.</p>

<h3>Policies</h3>

<p><strong>Public Information</strong></p>

<p>Any information or anything posted by you within Hubzilla MAY be public or visible to anybody on the internet. To the extent possible, Hubzilla allows you to protect content and restrict who can view it.</p>

<p>Your profile photo, your channel name, and the location (URL or network address) of your channel are visible to anybody on the internet and privacy controls will not affect the display of these items.</p>

<p>You MAY additionally provide other profile information. Any information which you provide in your "default" or <strong>public profile</strong> MAY be transmitted to other hubs in Hubzilla and additionally MAY be displayed in the channel directory. You can restrict the viewing of this profile information. It may be restricted only to members of your hub, or only connections (friends), or other limited sets of viewers as you desire. If you wish for your profile to be restricted, you must set the appropriate privacy setting, or simply DO NOT provide additional information.</p>

<p><strong>Content</strong></p>

<p>Content you provide (status posts, photos, files, etc.) belongs to you. Hubzilla default is to publish content openly and visible to anybody on the internet (PUBLIC). You MAY control this in your channel settings and restrict the default permissions or you MAY restrict the visibility of any single published item separately (PRIVATE). Hubzilla developers will ensure that restricted content is ONLY visible to those in the restriction list - to the best of their ability.</p>

<p>Content (especially status posts) that you share with other networks or that you have made visible to anybody on the internet (PUBLIC) cannot easily be taken back once it has been published. It MAY be shared with other networks and made available through RSS/Atom feeds. It may also be syndicated on other Hubzilla sites. It MAY appear on other networks and websites and be visible in internet searches. If you do not wish this default behaviour please adjust your channel settings and restrict who can see your content.</p>

<p><strong>Comments and Forum posts</strong></p>

<p>Comments to posts that were created by others and posts which are designated as forum posts belong to you as the creator/author, but the distribution of these posts is not under your direct control, and you relinquish SOME rights to these items. These posts/comments MAY be re-distributed to others, and MAY be visible to anybody on the internet. In the case of comments, the creator of the "first message" in the thread (conversation) to which you are replying controls the distribution of all comments and replies to that message. They "own" and therefore have certain rights with regard to the entire conversation (including all comments contained within it). You can still edit or delete the comment, but the conversation owner also has rights to edit, delete, re-distribute, and backup/restore any or all the content from the conversation.</p>

<p><strong>Private Information</strong></p>

<p>Hubzilla developers will ensure that any content you provide which is designated as PRIVATE will be protected against eavesdropping - to the best of their ability. Private channel content CAN be seen in the database of every involved hub administrator, but private messages are obscured in the database. The latter means that it is very difficult, but NOT impossible for this content to be seen by a hub administrator. Private channel content and private messages are also stripped from email notifications. End to end encryption is provided as an optional feature and this CANNOT be seen, even by a determined administrator.</p>

<h3>Identity Privacy</h3>

<p>Privacy for your identity is another aspect. Because you have a decentralized identity in Hubzilla, your privacy extends beyond your home hub. If you want to have complete control of your privacy and security you should run your own hub on a dedicated server. For many people, this is complicated and may stretch their technical abilities. So let's list a few precautions you can make to assure your privacy as much as possible.</p>

<p>A decentralized identity has a lot of advantages and gives you al lot of interesting features, but you should be aware of the fact that your identity is known by other hubs in Hubzilla network. One of those advantages is that other channels can serve you customized content and allow you to see private things (such as private photos which others wish to share with you). Because of this those channels need to know who you are. But we understand that sometimes those other channels know more from you than you might desire. For instance the plug-in Visage that can tell a channel owner the last time you visit their profile. You can easily OPT-OUT of this low level and we think, harmless tracking.</p>

<ul>
<li>You can enable <a href="http://donottrack.us/">Do Not Track (DNT)</a> in your web browser. We respect this new privacy policy proposal. All modern browsers support DNT. You will find it in the privacy settings of your browsers or else you can consult the web browser's manual. This will not affect the functionality of Hubzilla. This setting is probably enough for most people.</li>
</ul>

<p>*You can <a href="settings">disable publication</a> of your channel in our channel directory. If you want people to find your channel, you should give your channel address directly to them. We think this is a good indication that you prefer extra privacy and automatically enable "Do Not Track" if this is the case.</p>

<ul>
<li>You can have a blocked hub. That means that all channels and content on that hub is not public, and not visible to the outside world. This is something only your hub administrator can do. We also respect this and automatically enable "Do Not Track" if it is set.</li>
</ul>

<h3>Censorship</h3>

<p>Hubzilla is a global network which is inclusive of all religions and cultures. This does not imply that every member of the network feels the same way you do on contentious issues, and some people may be STRONGLY opposed to the content you post. In general, if you wish to post something that you know may nor be universally acceptable, the best approach is to restrict the audience using privacy controls to a small circle of friends.</p>

<p>Hubzilla as a network provider is unable to censor content. However, hub administrators MAY censor any content which appears on their hub to comply with local laws or even personal judgement. Their decision is final. If you have issues with any hub administrator, you may move your account and postings to another site which is more in line with your expectations. Please check (periodically) the <a href="help/TermsOfService">Terms of Service</a> of your hub to learn about any rules or guidelines. If your content consists of material which is illegal or may cause issues, you are STRONGLY encouraged to host your own (become a hub administrator). You may still find that your content is blocked on some hubs, but Hubzilla as a network cannot block it from being posted.</p>

<p>Hubzilla RECOMMENDS that hub administrators provide a grace period of 1-2 days between warning an account holder of content that needs to be removed and physically removing or disabling the account. This will give the content owner an opportunity to export their channel meta-data and import it to another site. In rare cases the content may be of such a nature to justify the immediate termination of the account. This is a hub decision, not a Hubzilla decision.</p>

<p>If you typically and regularly post content of an adult or offensive nature, you are STRONGLY encouraged to mark your account "NSFW" (Not Safe For Work). This will prevent the display of your profile photo in the directory except to viewers that have chosen to disable "safe mode". If your profile photo is found by directory administrators to be adult or offensive, the directory administrator MAY flag your profile photo as NSFW. There is currently no official mechanism to contest or reverse this decision, which is why you SHOULD mark your own account NSFW if it is likely to be inappropriate for general audiences.</p>

	

<h1 id="features">Features</h1>
<p>
    <strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Hubzilla in a Nutshell</span></strong><br><br>TL;DR <br><br>Hubzilla provides distributed web publishing and social communications with <strong>decentralised permissions</strong>.<br><br>So what exactly are "decentralised permissions"? They give me the ability to share something on my website (photos, media, files, webpages, etc.) with specific people on completely different websites - but not necessarily <em>everybody</em> on those websites; and they do not need a password on my website and do not need to login to my website to view the things I've shared with them. They have one password on their own website and "magic authentication" between affiliated websites in the network. Also, as it is decentralised, there is no third party which has the ability to bypass permissions and see everything in the network.<br><br>Hubzilla combines many features of traditional blogs, social networking and media, content management systems, and personal cloud storage into an easy to use framework. Each node in the grid can operate standalone or link with other nodes to create a super-network; leaving privacy under the control of the original publisher. <br><br>Hubzilla is an open source webserver application written originally in PHP/MySQL and is easily installable by those with basic website administration skills. It is also easily extended via plugins and themes and other third-party tools. <br><br><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;">Hubzilla Features</span></strong><br><br><br>Hubzilla is a general-purpose web publishing and communication network, with several unique features.&nbsp;&nbsp;It is designed to be used by the widest range of people on the web, from non-technical bloggers, to expert PHP programmers and seasoned systems administrators.<br><br>This page lists some of the core features of Hubzilla that are bundled with the official release.&nbsp;&nbsp;As with most free and open source software, there may be many other extensions, additions, plugins, themes and configurations that are limited only by the needs and imagination of the members.<br><br><strong><span style="font-size: 20px;">Built for Privacy and Freedom</span></strong><br><br>One of the design goals of Hubzilla is to enable easy communication on the web, while preserving privacy, if so desired by members. To achieve this goal, Hubzilla includes a number of features allowing arbitrary levels of privacy:<br><br><strong>Affinity Slider</strong><br><br>When adding connnections in Hubzilla, members have the option of assigning "affinity" levels (how close your friendship is) to the new connection.&nbsp;&nbsp;For example, when adding someone who happens to be a person whose blog you follow, you could assign their channel an affinity level of "Acquaintances". <br><br>On the other hand, when adding a friend's channel, they could be placed under the affinity level of "Friends".<br><br>At this point, Hubzilla <em>Affinity Slider</em> tool, which usually appears at the top of your "Matrix" page, adjusts the content on the page to include those within the desired affinity range. Channels outside that range will not be displayed, unless you adjust the slider to include them.<br><br>The Affinity Slider allows instantaneous filtering of large amounts of content, grouped by levels of closeness.<br><br><strong>Connection Filtering</strong><br><br>You have the ability to control precisely what appears in your stream using the optional "Connection Filter". When enabled, the Connection Editor provides inputs for selecting criteria which needs to be matched in order to include or exclude a specific post from a specific channel. Once a post has been allowed, all comments to that post are allowed regardless of whether they match the selection criteria. You may select words that if present block the post or ensure it is included in your stream. Regular expressions may be used for even finer control, as well as hashtags or even the detected language of the post.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br><strong>Access Control Lists</strong><br><br>When sharing content, members have the option of restricting who sees the content.&nbsp;&nbsp;By clicking on the padlock underneath the sharing box, one may choose desired recipients of the post, by clicking on their names.<br><br>Once sent, the message will be viewable only by the sender and the selected recipients.&nbsp;&nbsp;In other words, the message will not appear on any public walls.<br><br>Access Control Lists may be applied to content and posts, photos, events, webpages, chatrooms and files. <br><br><strong>Single Sign-on</strong><br><br>Access Control Lists work for all channels in the grid due to our unique single sign-on technology. Most internal links provide an identity token which can be verified on other Hubzilla sites and used to control access to private resources. You login once to your home hub. After that, authentication to all Hubzilla resources is "magic".<br><br><br><strong>WebDAV enabled File Storage</strong><br><br>Files may be uploaded to your personal storage area using your operating system utilities (drag and drop in most cases). You may protect these files with Access Control Lists to any combination of Hubzilla members (including some third party network members) or make them public.<br><br><strong>Photo Albums</strong><br><br>Store photos in albums. All your photos may be protected by Access Control Lists.<br><br><strong>Events Calendar</strong><br><br>Create and manage events and tasks, which may also be protected with Access Control Lists. Events can be imported/exported to other software using the industry standard vcalendar/iCal format and shared in posts with others. Birthday events are automatically added from your friends and converted to your correct timezone so that you will know precisely when the birthday occurs - no matter where you are located in the world in relation to the birthday person. Events are normally created with attendance counters so your friends and connections can RSVP instantly. <br><br><strong>Chatrooms</strong><br><br>You may create any number of personal chatrooms and allow access via Access Control Lists. These are typically more secure than XMPP, IRC, and other Instant Messaging transports, though we also allow using these other services via plugins.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br><br><strong>Webpage Building</strong><br><br>Hubzilla has many "Content Management" creation tools for building webpages, including layout editing, menus, blocks, widgets, and page/content regions. All of these may be access controlled so that the resulting pages are private to their intended audience. <br><br><strong>Apps</strong><br><br>Apps may be built and distributed by members. These are different from traditional "vendor lockin" apps because they are controlled completely by the author - who can provide access control on the destination app pages and charge accordingly for this access. Most apps in Hubzilla are free and can be created easily by those with no programming skills. <br><br><strong>Layout</strong><br><br>Page layout is based on a description language called Comanche. Hubzilla is itself written in Comanche layouts which you can change. This allows a level of customisation you won't typically find in so-called "multi-user environments".<br><br><strong>Bookmarks</strong><br><br>Share and save/manage bookmarks from links provided in conversations.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br> <br> <br><strong>Private Message Encryption and Privacy Concerns</strong><br><br>Private mail is stored in an obscured format. While this is not bullet-proof it typically prevents casual snooping by the site administrator or ISP.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>Each Hubzilla channel has it's own unique set of private and associated public RSA 4096-bit keys, generated when the channels is first created. This is used to protect private messages and posts in transit.<br><br>Additionally, messages may be created utilising "end-to-end encryption" which cannot be read by Hubzilla operators or ISPs or anybody who does not know the passcode. <br><br>Public messages are generally not encrypted in transit or in storage.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>Private messages may be retracted (unsent) although there is no guarantee the recipient hasn't read it yet.<br><br>Posts and messages may be created with an expiration date, at which time they will be deleted/removed on the recipient's site.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br><br><strong>Service Federation</strong><br><br>In addition to addon "cross-post connectors" to a variety of alternate networks, there is native support for importation of content from RSS/Atom feeds and using this to create special channels. Also, an experimental but working implementation of the Diaspora protocol allows communication with people on the Friendica and Diaspora decentralised social networks. This is currently marked experimental because these networks do not have the same level of privacy and encryption features and abilities as Hubzilla and may present privacy risks.<br><br>There is also experimental support for OpenID authentication which may be used in Access Control Lists. This is a work in progress. Your Hubzilla hub may be used as an OpenID provider to authenticate you to external services which use this technology. <br><br>Channels may have permissions to become "derivative channels" where two or more existing channels combine to create a new topical channel. <br><br><strong>Privacy Groups</strong><br><br>Our implementation of privacy groups is similar to Google "Circles" and Diaspora "Aspects". This allows you to filter your incoming stream by selected groups, and automatically set the outbound Access Control List to only those in that privacy group when you post. You may over-ride this at any time (prior to sending the post).&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br><br><strong>Directory Services</strong><br><br>We provide easy access to a directory of members and provide decentralised tools capable of providing friend "suggestions". The directories are normal Hubzilla sites which have chosen to accept the directory server role. This requires more resources than most typical sites so is not the default. Directories are synchronised and mirrored so that they all contain up-to-date information on the entire network (subject to normal propagation delays).&nbsp;&nbsp;<br> <br><br><strong>TLS/SSL</strong><br><br>For Hubzilla hubs that use TLS/SSL, client to server communications are encrypted via TLS/SSL.&nbsp;&nbsp;Given recent disclosures in the media regarding widespread, global surveillance and encryption circumvention by the NSA and GCHQ, it is reasonable to assume that HTTPS-protected communications may be compromised in various ways. Private communications are consequently encrypted at a higher level before sending offsite.<br><br><strong>Channel Settings</strong><br><br>When a channel is created, a role is chosen which applies a number of pre-configured security and privacy settings. These are chosen for best practives to maintain privacy at the requested levels.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>If you choose a "custom" privacy role, each channel allows fine-grained permissions to be set for various aspects of communication.&nbsp;&nbsp;For example, under the "Security and Privacy Settings" heading, each aspect on the left side of the page, has six (6) possible viewing/access options, that can be selected by clicking on the dropdown menu. There are also a number of other privacy settings you may edit.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>The options are:<br><br> - Nobody except yourself.<br> - Only those you specifically allow.<br> - Anybody in your address book.<br> - Anybody on this website.<br> - Anybody in this network.<br> - Anybody authenticated.<br> - Specific people you provide a Guest Access Token to in order to access a specific item.<br> - Anybody on the Internet.<br><br><br><strong>Public and Private Forums</strong><br><br>Forums are typically channels which may be open to participation from multiple authors. There are currently two mechanisms to post to forums: 1) "wall-to-wall" posts and 2) via forum @mention tags. Forums can be created by anybody and used for any purpose. The directory contains an option to search for public forums. Private forums can only be posted to and often only seen by members.<br><br><br><strong>Account Cloning</strong><br><br>Accounts in Hubzilla are referred to as <em>nomadic identities</em>, because a member's identity is not bound to the hub where the identity was originally created.&nbsp;&nbsp;For example, when you create a Facebook or Gmail account, it is tied to those services.&nbsp;&nbsp;They cannot function without Facebook.com or Gmail.com.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>By contrast, say you've created a Hubzilla identity called <strong>tina@Hubzillahub.com</strong>.&nbsp;&nbsp;You can clone it to another Hubzilla hub by choosing the same, or a different name: <strong>liveForever@SomeHubzillaHub.info</strong><br><br>Both channels are now synchronized, which means all your contacts and preferences will be duplicated on your clone.&nbsp;&nbsp;It doesn't matter whether you send a post from your original hub, or the new hub.&nbsp;&nbsp;Posts will be mirrored on both accounts.<br><br>This is a rather revolutionary feature, if we consider some scenarios:<br><br> - What happens if the hub where an identity is based suddenly goes offline?&nbsp;&nbsp;Without cloning, a member will not be able to communicate until that hub comes back online (no doubt many of you have seen and cursed the Twitter "Fail Whale").&nbsp;&nbsp;With cloning, you just log into your cloned account, and life goes on happily ever after. <br><br> - The administrator of your hub can no longer afford to pay for his free and public Hubzilla hub. He announces that the hub will be shutting down in two weeks.&nbsp;&nbsp;This gives you ample time to clone your identity(ies) and preserve yourHubzilla relationships, friends and content.<br><br> - What if your identity is subject to government censorship?&nbsp;&nbsp;Your hub provider may be compelled to delete your account, along with any identities and associated data.&nbsp;&nbsp;With cloning, Hubzilla offers <strong>censorship resistance</strong>.&nbsp;&nbsp;You can have hundreds of clones, if you wanted to, all named different, and existing on many different hubs, strewn around the internet.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>Hubzilla offers interesting new possibilities for privacy. You can read more at the &lt;&lt;Private Communications Best Practices&gt;&gt; page.<br><br>Some caveats apply. For a full explanation of identity cloning, read the &lt;HOW TO CLONE MY IDENTITY&gt;.<br><br><strong>Multiple Profiles</strong><br><br>Any number of profiles may be created containing different information and these may be made visible to certain of your connections/friends. A "default" profile can be seen by anybody and may contain limited information, with more information available to select groups or people. This means that the profile (and site content) your beer-drinking buddies see may be different than what your co-workers see, and also completely different from what is visible to the general public. <br><br><strong>Account Backup</strong><br><br>Red offers a simple, one-click account backup, where you can download a complete backup of your profile(s).&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>Backups can then be used to clone or restore a profile.<br><br><strong>Account Deletion</strong><br><br>Accounts can be immediately deleted by clicking on a link. That's it.&nbsp;&nbsp;All associated content is then deleted from the grid (this includes posts and any other content produced by the deleted profile). Depending on the number of connections you have, the process of deleting remote content could take some time but it is scheduled to happen as quickly as is practical.<br><br><strong><span style="font-size: 20px;">Content Creation</span></strong><br><br><strong>Writing Posts</strong><br><br>Hubzilla supports a number of different ways of adding rich-text content. The default is a custom variant of BBcode, tailored for use in Hubzilla. You may also enable the use of Markdown if you find that easier to work with. A visual editor may also be used. The traditional visual editor for Hubzilla had some serious issues and has since been removed. We are currently looking for a replacement. <br><br>When creating "Websites", content may be entered in HTML, Markdown, BBcode, and/or plain text.<br><br><strong>Deletion of content</strong><br>Any content created in Hubzilla remains under the control of the member (or channel) that originally created it.&nbsp;&nbsp;At any time, a member can delete a message, or a range of messages.&nbsp;&nbsp;The deletion process ensures that the content is deleted, regardless of whether it was posted on a channel's primary (home) hub, or on another hub, where the channel was remotely authenticated via Zot (Hubzilla communication and authentication protocol).<br><br><strong>Media</strong><br>Similar to any other modern blogging system, social network, or a micro-blogging service, Hubzilla supports the uploading of files, embedding of videos, linking web pages.<br><br><strong>Previewing/Editing</strong> <br>Post can be previewed prior to sending and edited after sending.<br><br><strong>Voting/Consensus</strong><br>Posts can be turned into "consensus" items which allows readers to offer feedback, which is collated into "agree", "disagree", and "abstain" counters. This lets you gauge interest for ideas and create informal surveys. <br><br><br><strong>Extending Hubzilla</strong><br><br>Hubzilla can be extended in a number of ways, through site customisation, personal customisation, option setting, themes, and addons/plugins. <br><br><strong>API</strong><br><br>An API is available for use by third-party services. This is based originally on the early Twitter API (for which hundreds of third-party tools exist). It is currently being extended to provide access to facilities and abilities which are specific to Hubzilla. Access may be provided by login/password or OAuth and client registration of OAuth applications is provided.
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<h1 id="zot">Zot protocol</h1>
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    <strong>What is Zot?</strong><br><br>Zot is the protocol that powers Hubzilla, providing three core capabilities: Communications, Identity, and Access Control.<br><br>The functionality it provides can also be described as follows: <br><br> - a relationship online is just a bunch of permissions<br> - the internet is just another folder<br><br><strong><span style="font-size: 20px;">Communications</span></strong><br><br>Zot is a revolutionary protocol which provides <em>decentralised communications</em> and <em>identity management</em> across the grid. The resulting platform can provide web services comparable to those offered by large corporate providers, but without the large corporate provider and their associated privacy issues, insatiable profit drive, and walled-garden mentality.<br><br>Communications and social networking are an integral part of the grid. Any channel (and any services provided by that channel) can make full use of feature-rich social communications on a global scale. These communications may be public or private - and private communications comprise not only fully encrypted transport, but also encrypted storage to help protect against accidental snooping and disclosure by rogue system administrators and internet service providers. <br><br>Zot allows a wide array of background services in the grid, from offering friend suggestions, to directory services. You can also perform other things which would typically only be possibly on a centralized provider - such as "Wall to Wall" posts. Private/multiple profiles can be easily created, and web content can be tailored to the viewer via the <em>Affinity Slider</em>. <br><br>You won't find these features at all on other decentralized communication services. In addition to providing hub (server) decentralization, perhaps the most innovative and interesting Zot feature is its provision of <em>decentralized identity</em> services.<br><br><strong><span style="font-size: 20px;">Identity</span></strong> <br><br>Zot's identity layer is unique. It provides <em>invisible single sign-on</em> across all sites in the grid. <br><br>It also provides <em>nomadic identity</em>, so that your communications with friends, family, and or anyone else you're communicating with won't be affected by the loss of your primary communication node - either temporarily or permanently. <br><br>The important bits of your identity and relationships can be backed up to a thumb drive, or your laptop, and may appear at any node in the grid at any time - with all your friends and preferences intact. <br><br>Crucially, these nomadic instances are kept in sync so any instance can take over if another one is compromised or damaged. This protects you against not only major system failure, but also temporary site overloads and governmental manipulation or censorship. <br><br>Nomadic identity, single sign-on, and Hubzilla's decentralization of hubs, we believe, introduce a high degree of degree of <em>resiliency</em> and <em>persistence</em> in internet communications, that are sorely needed amidst global trends towards corporate centralization, as well as mass and indiscriminate government surveillance and censorship.<br><br>As you browse the grid, viewing channels and their unique content, you are seamlessly authenticated as you go, even across completely different server hubs. No passwords to enter. Nothing to type. You're just greeted by name on every new site you visit. <br><br>How does Zot do that? We call it <em>magic-auth</em>, because Hubzilla hides the details of the complexities that go into single sign-on logins, and nomadic identities, from the experience of browsing on the grid.&nbsp;&nbsp;This is one of the design goals of Hubzilla: to increase privacy, and freedom on the web, while reducing the complexity and tedium brought by the need to enter new passwords and user names for every different sight that someone might visit online.<br><br>You login only once on your home hub (or any nomadic backup hub you have chosen). This allows you to access any authenticated services provided anywhere in the grid - such as shopping, blogs, forums, and access to private information. This is just like the services offered by large corporate providers with huge user databases; however you can be a member of this community, as well as a server on this network using a $35 Rasberry Pi. Your password isn't stored on a thousand different sites, or even worse, only on a few sites like Google and Facebook, beyond your direct control.<br><br>You cannot be silenced. You cannot be removed from the grid, unless you yourself choose to exit it.<br><br><strong><span style="font-size: 20px;">Access Control</span></strong><br><br>Zot's identity layer allows you to provide fine-grained permissions to any content you wish to publish - and these permissions extend across Hubzilla. This is like having one super huge website made up of an army of small individual websites - and where each channel in the grid can completely control their privacy and sharing preferences for any web resources they create. <br><br>Currently, the grid supports communications, photo albums, events, and files. This will be extended in the future to provide content management services (web pages) and cloud storage facilities, such as WebDAV and multi-media libraries. Every object and how it is shared and with whom is completely under your control.<br><br>This type of control is available on large corporate providers such as Facebook and Google, because they own the user database. Within the grid, there is no need for a huge user databaseon your machine - because the grid <em>is</em> your user database. It has what is essentially infinite capacity (limited by the total number of hubs online across the internet), and is spread amongst hundreds, and potentially millions of computers. <br><br>Access can be granted or denied for any resource, to any channel, or any group of channels; anywhere within the grid. Others can access your content if you permit them to do so, and they do not even need to have an account on your hub. Your private photos cannot be viewed, because permission really work; they are not an addon that was added as an afterthought. If you aren't on the list of allowed viewers for a particular photo, you aren't going to look at it. <br><br><strong><span style="font-size: 18px;">Additional Resources and Links</span></strong><br><br>For more detailed, technical information about Zot, check out the following links: <br><br> - <a href="https://github.com/friendica/red/wiki/Zot---A-High-Level-Overview">A high level overview</a><br><br> - <a href="https://github.com/friendica/red/wiki/zot">Zot development specification</a><br><br> - <a href="https://github.com/redmatrix/hubzilla/blob/master/include/zot.php">Zot reference implementation in PHP</a>	
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