Secure Social Media Spaces for Communities of Vulnerable People

This paper presents a proposal for developing secure social media spaces for groups of people that could be vulnerable to external influences. These could be refuges from war torn or politically unstable countries that could be persecuted by political opponents, or young children that could be targeted online by paedophiles and other online criminals. The system utilizes Block-Chaining technologies to provide the secure environment and Recommender Systems to link members to sub-groups based on their preferable discussion topics and ideas. There are challenges in the proposal as the key issue of trust in the system must be guaranteed by a third party. This organization will need to verify the identity of every subscriber and then create secure user identities / profiles that guarantee the anonymity of members. Block-chaining technologies will also allow the monitoring of user behaviour to ensure the trustworthiness of the environment is maintained. The cost of the system and its operation will be another consideration. The reputation of Block-Chaining technologies due to its links with crypto-currencies should not be considered a negative factor as there are many successful implementations in everyday life.